John Heaphy works behind the bar in 1984 at John’s House of Prime in his early-days ownership of Lima restaurants.
Courtesy of John Grindrod
Before I begin Part 2 of the John Heaphy story, I’d like to clarify something from last week’s column when I used what I thought was a pretty clear figure of speech, referring to John as the valedictorian of The School of Hard Knocks. It seems I unwittingly misled some who were reading perhaps a bit too quickly and thought I referred to John as the valedictorian of his 1978 LCC graduating class. Certainly, John didn’t say that in the interviews we did, and I would never on my own attempt to polish a résumé that, given his subsequent entrepreneurial successes, certainly needs no embellishment.
For Heaphy, the head of Good Foods Restaurant, and one of Lima’s most visible entrepreneurs, at 64 years of age, there’s time for reflection of his career path through the years.
Recalls Heaphy with a laugh, “When I was old enough to find my way to Lost Creek Golf Course, at the end of play on Sunday, I’d walk the course and scour the weeds and creek and find dozens of golf balls. I’d clean them up and, on the following Saturday, I’d go back out there and sell them back to the same guys who lost them!”
Following his 1981 deli in Cook Tower, Heaphy expanded. By the age of 26 as a young husband and father of the first two of his four children, he owned four local restaurants, the White Burch Inn (formerly John’s House of Prime), the Elmview Pub and two Chubb’s Subs.
However, with high interest rates on his loans and high regional unemployment combined with, he admits, his own inexperience in finance, Heaphy recalls a devastating time in his life.
“I had to file for bankruptcy. With a wife and two children and a lot of wounded pride, times were really tough.”
Having lost his home, cars and facing significant debt that would take him years to pay off, he and his wife Aimee and Anthony and Kaitlyn, destined to be the older sibs to sisters Jackie and Carly, faced uncertainty.
Recalls Heaphy, “Aimee, well, words really can’t describe the support she’s provided during my deepest dips. What an incredible wife, mother and grandmother to our nine grandchildren she’s been.”
Needing a job that could become the metaphoric shovel to begin digging his way out of a gaping hole, Heaphy took a job with Gordon Food Service, then, a regional food service distributor headquartered in Michigan. He would eventually work eight extremely fulfilling years in sales for a company that grew to become the largest privately owned food-distribution company in the world.
Recalls Heaphy, “My, it was such an honor to work for Paul Gordon and his sons. The impact the Gordons had on me was life changing. They combined elite business sense with a Christian decency that showed in their treatment of both employees and customers. As for the tangibles that complemented what I learned, there was a nice salary and plenty of perks.”
Despite finding a great deal of success with GFS and doing well eradicating his debts, by the mid-1990s, there was that old familiar itch that just had to be scratched. Facing another tough decision to leave a very good job, he relied on Aimee to remember that wedding day vow to stand by him for better, for worse, and she did by supporting his decision to leave GFS and buy Happy Daz on West North Street. Over the next ten years, Heaphy would open six more Happy Daz locations.
In 2005, Heaphy added to his portfolio by purchasing a well-known Lima brand, Beer Barrel Pizza, which first opened in 1965. Heaphy had some familiarity with the brand, having made pizzas there as a teen.
Says Heaphy, “The brand really exploded after I built the second Beer Barrel off West Market in 2008. Over the next 19 years, we’ve added eleven more locations with a twelfth scheduled to open in the spring of 2025, in addition to opening Old City Prime in 2013 and The Sycamore in the heart of Columbus’s German Village in 2021.”
As for Heaphy’s dream of a revitalized downtown area, with Old City Prime and this past summer’s Spring and Main rollout with its three restaurants under one roof, Heaphy’s impact on downtown development is quite visible. Combined with the newly opened amphitheater to the southeast and the civic center to the north, just a few hundred feet away for both, the southeast quad is filling in nicely in offering quality entertainment.
Heaphy’s next and, he says, likely last downtown project, involves renovations of the historic Newson-Hawisher, Franklin and Pabst Tasting Room buildings on the corner of Main and Elm. When completed, these will house his company’s corporate offices and also provide tenant space for new business.
While the ride, as all good roller coasters have, has had some dips, with the support of a loving family and a knack for not losing sight of the past while, in true visionary fashion, also looking to the future, he’s kept the ‘coaster on track.
Concludes, Heaphy, “I think I’ve touched a few lives and made a difference in my hometown, and I also think my immigrant grandparents, who arrived over a century ago with nothing but a strong work ethic and their dreams, would approve.”
John Grindrod is a regular columnist for The Lima News, a freelance writer and editor and the author of two books. Reach him at [email protected].
