Pizza a passion for local businessman Jeff Foster

Jeff Foster loves to make a good pizza.He will even show you how, if he has the time.But the owner of Jeff's Pizza in Carnegie works quite a bit. He is at his small pizzeria on Second Avenue seven days a week, 10 hours a day. In previous years, he would work 100 hours a week.But Foster said he wouldn't have it any other way."I'm an uneducated man. I will admit that. But this is all I know," said Foster, looking around the inside of his pizza place."I love what I do. I'm very fortunate that I own this building. This is it, this is what I know. But would I change that? No."Jeff's Pizza opened on Third Street in December 1988, and has managed to outlive three franchise pizza locations next door to its current location. Although Foster, 53, acknowledges that the numerous Carnegie restaurant and pizza choices hurt his business, this will not stop him from doing what he does."I think I have a pretty good base of customers who appreciate my food. I believe I do anyway," he said.One of those customers is Carnegie Borough Council member Mike Sarsfield, who said Foster goes out of his way to make his customers feel wanted."There is no doubt about that. That's one of the reasons I keep going back," Sarsfield said.Foster first became an employee of the restaurant business at Don's Pizza in Imperial, which is owned by his uncle, John Burke. It was there, at age 22, that Foster "learned the ins and outs of the business.""That was my first experience with it and I learned that if you want to be successful, you better do things the same every day. In other words, you have to make things homemade. Otherwise, people will know. They will figure it out. They will know that you are not making it right," Foster said."Homemade," to Foster, means mixing a pizza dough each time a pizza is ordered. He has a specially-made sauce.All of the hours Foster has worked over the years have taken their toll. The stress of the flood caused by the remnants of Hurricane Ivan in 1994 cost him $50,000."I had no intention of leaving. I never thought about calling it a day," Foster said. In 2002, Foster suffered a heart attack. The following year, he underwent quadruple-bypass surgery.He said his wife of 25 years, Patricia, has been a saint."I had to have a good woman at home if I was going to work this many hours," Foster said.Still, Foster insists he will never leave Jeff's Pizza."Let's put it this way: I would not sell this place even if my doctor told me to. It's all I know."