New pizza spot comes to Clovis

By Joan Obra / The Fresno Bee

Here’s another restaurant that recently opened at the northeast corner of Willow and Nees avenues in Clovis: TJ’s Pizza Buffet.

On Monday, TJ’s launched in the Parkway Trails shopping center, joining the Guadalajara restaurant that opened in early August.

I’ve already talked at length about Guadalajara, so here’s a bit about TJ’s. The 5,500-square-foot restaurant has a dining room that seats 150 customers, plus a kids’ room with video games, pinball and gumball machines.

“We’re trying to make it really family friendly,” says co-owner Joey Willis.

The all-you-can-eat buffet includes a salad bar, macaroni and cheese, soups, breadsticks, brownies, apple crisp and ice cream.

Then there are the pizzas.

Flavors include Hawaiian, meat lovers, vegetarian, spinach Alfredo, barbecue and the TJ’s special, topped with buffalo wing sauce, chicken, onions and cheese.

Sports lovers will appreciate the five television sets, but they can’t order beer. The restaurant only serves nonalcoholic drinks.

If it sounds like a chain restaurant in the making, that should be no surprise. Willis and his partner, Tim Wall, originally wanted to own a string of CiCi’s Pizza restaurants in the central San Joaquin Valley. These buffet restaurants — with pizza, pasta, salad and dessert — are in 32 states, but not California.

They bought the rights to launch CiCi’s in the Valley, but they didn’t want to wait a couple of years for the Texas-based chain to build a local distribution company, Willis says. So they struck out on their own.

Customers will see Willis at TJ’s, but they won’t see his partner. Wall is the president and chief executive officer of Rug Doctor, a former Fresno company that moved to Plano, Texas, in the late 1990s.

Though Willis hopes to turn TJ’s into a chain, he wants to maintain a Valley feel. Names of local sports teams adorn the walls. He also will donate a percentage of TJ’s sales to schools and churches in the area.

What’s most remarkable is the “Texas prices” — all-you-can-eat buffet for $6.99, or $3.99 for children aged 3-12. Children younger than 3 years old eat for free.

Drinks with free refills are $1.25, or 99 cents for children 12 years old and younger.

Hours are 11 a.m.-9 p.m. Sundays-Thursdays and 11 a.m.-10 p.m. Fridays-Saturdays. For more information, call (559) 298-8857.

The columnist can be reached at jobra@fresnobee.com or (559)441-6365. Read her blog at fresnobeehive.com/author/joan_obra.