For the past 44 years, Johnny’s Pizza House has kept Monroe and the surrounding area supplied with what has been called “the best pizza this side of Italy.”
“Some of my fondest memories involve Johnny’s pizza. My friends and I would get Johnny’s after football games on Friday nights,” said Tess Stickney, a local resident to the Monroe area and lover of Johnny’s. “We even had Johnny’s delivered to our tent at the senior camp out at Neville High School. We had some good times with Johnny’s.”
Johnny’s Pizza House was established in 1967 by Johnny Huntsman. While attending college at Graceland in Iowa, Huntsman worked for a football coach who owned a pizza house in the area. According to Bernie Lear, chairman of Johnny’s Pizza House, Inc. and employee of 41 years, this experience gave Huntsman the idea to open a pizza house of his own.
“He [Huntsman] is from West Monroe, and he worked at graphic packaging. He left that job to open Johnny’s,” said Lear.
Johnny’s is a successful company, with 29 company owned restaurants in North Louisiana, 4 franchised restaurants and 27 additional agreements to open franchises. Their locations spread throughout the Texas, Arkansas and Louisiana area, with an agreement for a franchise in Mississippi. However, Johnny’s Pizza House was not always so successful.
In 1988, Huntsman filed for bankruptcy.  At this time, Johnny’s Pizza had 30 locations including one in Mississippi.
“Local newspapers made a big deal about the situation,” said president and CEO of Johnny’s Pizza Inc., Melvin DeLacerda, who has worked with the company for 33 years. “They [the media and the public] did not understand the difference between chapter 7 and chapter 13 bankruptcy.”
Huntsman had to find a way to gain public interest and to show locals that Johnny’s was not closing their doors just yet. After alerting local media about his plan, Huntsman bought a nine-dollar barrel from Wal-Mart, cut a hole in the bottom, and wearing nothing but that barrel and a pair of boat shoes, he went to stand at the busiest intersection in Monroe and pleaded with locals to, “Please eat Johnny’s Pizza.”  This move immediately brought sales back up.
Being that next year is their 45 anniversary, the company looks back on how far they have come since that first pizza house on Desiard. Recently, Johnny’s Pizza looked into expanding its locations all the way to Georgia.  “Actually, there is another Johnny’s Pizza in Georgia,” said DeLacerda and Lear. The Georgian Johnny’s is expanding as well, but the two companies have agreed that Georgia Johnny’s will not expand outside of Georgia and Louisiana Johnny’s will not expand into Georgia.