IN Peters Township August/September 2016 | Page 83

W

hen Bill Moore started his career with Eat’n Park as a
teenager in 1979, he likely couldn’t have imagined that
nearly 40 years later, both his career—and his personal
life—would be flourishing as a result.
Moore, a 1982 graduate of Upper St. Clair High School, started
working at the Peters Township Eat’n Park in 1979 as one of the
restaurant’s first salad bar workers; at the time, the Peters Township
location was one of the very first restaurants in the chain to offer a
salad bar.
Moore’s personal connection to the restaurant runs deep. His
grandfather is the late Larry Hatch, who founded the company in
1949. His mother, Claire Moore, invented the company’s beloved
strawberry pie in 1956 after his father, Bob Moore, basically said, “My
wife could do better.”
“They had traveled to Cincinnati to taste the pies at another chain,”
Moore explains. “After tasting several of them and saying they were
awful, my father said, ‘My wife could come up with a better recipe.’”
At her husband’s request, Claire, who was a young mother at the
time, created many recipes and distributed them to their neighbors
in Scott Township for taste testing. Based upon their reviews, she
perfected the recipe, which is still used to this day.
Ironically, Moore had actually never tried his mother’s famous
pie until about two years ago, despite the fact that he has made
“thousands” of the pies himself.
“I never liked strawberries, and then, about two years ago, I finally
tried the pie,” he says with a laugh. “I told my mom, ‘Hey, I think you
have something here.’”
Since those early days on the salad bar, Moore has since worked
his way through every other position and every level of management
in the restaurant, including manager of quality assurance. Today, he
works as the director of safety and security for Eat’n Park, a position
established after the tragic events of September 11, 2001.
“I call it the ‘dark side of the cookie,’ but it’s part of our normal
culture now. I truly enjoy what I do. I live and breathe safety,” he says.
Moore says that despite the seriousness of the subject matter, he
makes the company’s commitment to safety and security as engaging
and fun as possible. An avid runner,
he also tries to incorporate safety and
security themes into the corporate
wellness program, and at the company’s
last conference on safety and security,
his 250 managers were deemed “Safety
Superheroes”—and had the costumes
to prove it.
Moore also has the restaurant to
thank for introducing him to his wife.
At the time, he was 18 and working as a
cook when 16-year-old Teri came in to
fill out a job application.
“I thought she was cute, so I sat down
and helped her fill out her application.
I don’t know what prompted me to do
that—I was always incredibly shy,” he
says. “But I told her she could use me as
a reference.”
They worked together at the
restaurant for about eight years before
they started dating.

“We were just really good friends,” he says. “Actually, all of us who
worked were best friends. Everyone has their group—our group
was made up of kids from all over, including Upper St. Clair, Peters
Township, Ringgold and Canon-McMillan. We had a great time.”
The tight-knit group spent a good deal of time together, and Teri’s
brother ended up becoming Moore’s best friend. The Moores were
married in 1989 and have three children: Ryan, 24; Amanda, 22;
and Rachel, 19. Ryan and Amanda participated in the company’s
“Team Smiley” internship and both worked as restaurant greeters in
high school. Moore estimates that around 20 of his relatives work for
the beloved chain, including his young niece, who recently started
working part time at the company as her first job. Moreover, many
of the employees that he worked with back in 1979 are still with the
company.
Moore credits his company’s ability to evolve with changing times as
the key to its success.
“We started out as a car hop, and then added the dining room, and
then the salad bar and eventually the bakeries and now the pick-up
windows,” he explains. “We’re always exploring new ways to meet our
customers’ needs.”
The company is currently refreshing its restaurants and reinventing
the salad bar, whic h is now the fruit and salad bar. To appeal to its
younger customers, the Eat’n Park Hospitality Group has also rolled
out a brand-new restaurant, Hello Bistro, which is a made-to-order
salad and burger bar with locations in Oakland, the South Side,
Downtown and McCandless. It’s also introduced Delicious Raw,
a juice bar located downtown. In addition, the company owns the
Porch at Schenley, a bistro-style restaurant in Oakland, and owns and
manages Six Penn Kitchen in downtown Pittsburgh. The company’s
Parkhurst Dining division provides food services to area colleges,
businesses and professional sports teams.
With all of these developments on the horizon, Moore has no
intention of retiring anytime soon.
“Maybe in a few years,” he says with a laugh. “Right now, I’m having
too much fun.” ■

Peters Township | August/September 2016 | icmags.com 81