By Staff
Kim West
Franklin County Times
Four years ago Barbara Sage was driving back from church when she suddenly realized what to name her new pizza business.
Sage, owner of Five Star Pizza in Russellville, decided to name it after her five grandchildren at the time. She also picked out the green-and-gold color scheme for the restaurant.
"She chose the name because she had five grandchildren who could all cook pizzas," said Scarlett Gage, a seventh grader at Tharptown High School and the eldest daughter of Five Star manager Tim Sage.
The Sage family believes that a business should support its community as much as possible.
"If everyone participates in community service, then that's going to make the community grow," Tim Sage said. "And it's more important for a community to grow rather than an individual business because a successful community benefits everyone."
Five Star lends a helping hand to local churches, schools and civic groups with pizza buffet nights and ticket sales for baked spaghetti.
The pizzeria menu includes sandwiches – Italian beef or chicken bacon club – salads, baked spaghetti, apple cinnamon sticks for dessert and pizzas that come with either hand-tossed or thin crust and are available with more than a dozen different toppings, including Italian sausage, bacon, pepperoni and ham.
"We have 10 employees, and all of them are part-time," Barbara Sage said. "We have friendly people who work here."
She said with the help of a few of her bilingual employees, Five Star began providing a menu in Spanish.
"I think it has brought us a lot more business, especially from the Spanish-speaking community," Barbara Sage said. "We're also in the Spanish telephone book and we send out the menu in our mailers and ad inserts."
Five Star Pizza is open from 10:30 a.m. to 10 p.m. Monday through Thursday and 10:30 a.m. to 11 p.m. on Friday and Saturday. The business is also open on Sunday from 11 a.m. until 10 p.m.
For more information about parties or fundraisers, call 332-9777.