Tuscaloosa Firefighters Band Together to Open New Sandwich & Pizza Shop

A trio of Tuscaloosa firefighters have partnered up on a new business venture - a quick service restaurant specializing in handcrafted sandwiches, thin-crust pizza and a rotating line of specialty desserts.

Fireman and entrepreneur Josh Julian is putting the finishing touches on the Station Sandwiches & Pizza at 1821 Hargrove Road East, just up from the city of Tuscaloosa's rapidly progressing Fire Station 6 coming to the nearby intersection with Loop Road.

Local foodies may already know Julian from TuscNY Pizza, which he and other business partners took over a few years after it opened on McFarland Circle north of the river.

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Now Julian is teaming up with two other veteran firefighters - Captains Derrick Riddle and Gary House - to launch the Station, which will host soft openings this week. He told the Thread his associates built the brand new office buildings there on Hargrove to support their other growing business, Tuskaloosa Construction Inc., and decided a restaurant would make a nice addition.

"They just reached out to me and asked, hey what do you think about opening a restaurant in our new office space? That's where it started and slowly, over time, we just kind of came up with this concept," Julian said. "And it ended up being pretty obvious - why wouldn't we do something fire station-themed? It's what all three of us do and really a big part of our lives."

The firefighters' experience also often leads them to become great cooks, Julian said. Their shifts are generally 24 hours long, and it's hardly practical to eat out or get food delivered three times a day each shift you work.

Instead, everyone chips in for groceries and the greenest, newest guys in the firehouse cook for all its other inhabitants. If dinner doesn't taste right, the feedback is usually not subtle, Julian said.

"The newest guy - we'll say he gets that opportunity to grow," he laughed. "If they start cooking and everybody hates the food, they're gonna get ridiculed until they can figure out how to cook. But that really sharpens your skills and hones everything in, you can even develop a palette for certain things that you wouldn't necessarily have ever been exposed to otherwise."

The Station, as its name implies, will heavily feature sandwiches and pizzas. There's extremely limited seating inside the space, but Julian said their model will be quick-service with an eye for takeout and third-party delivery.

The sandwiches will be hand-crafted in-house with top-quality ingredients, and Julian said they plan to offer items you can't find easily around town.

"One of our signature sandwiches will be an Italian beef because Tuscaloosa really doesn't have many places with one on the menu, so we'll have a pretty true-to-form Italian beef - it's a really good product," Julian said. "We've got a Philly cheesesteak sandwich that's going to be incredible, we're going to start doing Conecuh Hot Dogs - we have a lot of specialty items we're bringing in and of course we also have the standard deli meats too. Great turkey, ham, pastrami, corn beef, all of that will be on the menu too. But I think our specialty items will definitely shine."

The pizzas are made by a company in Georgia, flash-frozen and sent to the Station to bake to piping-hot and ready to serve in about four minutes, but this is hardly a DiGiorno.

"I can't tell you how many frozen pizzas I tried over the course of the last six months, but I know one thing is for sure," Julian said. "When we ate this one, it was the only one. We immediately agreed, this is it. All the other ones just tasted like lunchroom pizza."

Julian said the pizzas still feature high-quality dough, cheese, and sauce and can be topped with anything in the shop, including sandwich meats that don't normally find their way onto a pie.

"Anything that's on the menu can go on a pizza and most pizza places don't carry brisket," Julian said. "That'll make for some interesting pizza possibilities."

The goal is an affordable lunch and dinner option that doesn't skip anything to save a buck.

"Once you taste the quality that we have there, then you'll understand what we're trying to do. We're not just bringing in the cheapest deli meats that we can or the cheapest bread we can, it's all very high quality, very good ingredients. It's costing the restaurant a little bit more to make that quality product, but the end result is just phenomenal," Julian said.

They plan to round out the menu with sides including specialty bagged chips but also pasta salad, coleslaw and more. A special treat will also be a rotating line of desserts dreamed up and baked by one of the firefighters' daughters.

The plan is for the Station to open six days a week, beginning Tuesday - Julian said when the Open sign is installed and lit up, folks are welcome to come in and place an order.

He thanked his business partners, Captains Derrick Riddle and Gary House, for their trust and support, and also credited his staff at both TuscNY and the new faces at the Station for their hard work.

"I couldn't do it without help from all those folks, my wife Meg and more," Julian said. "They are what makes the train stay on the track."

Keep up with the Station Sandwiches & Pizza on their Facebook page here, and for more coverage of restaurant and retail development, stay connected to the Tuscaloosa Thread.