Brenda and Steve Mattson had just closed up their food truck and Brenda was looking for a quick job to get her through until she could find a more stable situation.

She dropped off an application at the Pizza on the Run location in Powell, and just a few hours later she heard from owner Harold Kaiser to set up an interview. Eight years later, after managing the Powell, Lovell and then Cody stores, she's the new owner of her hometown pizza joint, which she's renamed Legends Pizza.

Her main goal with the business — keep the tradition of quality pizza that Kaiser and his brother started 39 years ago alive.

“This was the end of an era for Pizza on the Run, but the product will live on,” Mattson said. “Nothing except the name and ownership is going to change. That’s why I wanted to buy it, to have people comforted to know their hometown pizza place is still here.”

A quality pizza was always a key ingredient in Kaiser's recipe of success, eventually leading to six pizza joints around the Basin. After the Kaisers opened the Cody restaurant in their hometown in 1984, they expanded quickly. They added Powell the next year and Lovell, Worland and Greybull all within the next three years.

“I didn’t sleep much,” Kaiser said.

There was a Pizza Hut in the area, but it didn't deliver until the 2000s, so Kaiser said college students staying up late in Powell were "eating out of their hands." The business was named Pizza on the Run, she said, to denote that they delivered.

But, as Mattson noted, the business is good at rolling with the changes. Even though the hand rolled dough recipe has been a constant since the start, Kaiser and his brother subscribed to pizza trade magazines and attended conventions to ensure they had great pizza and a quality business.

The first change was when places like Blair’s opened for 24 hours, allowing college students a chance to get discount deli food late into the night. Then Pizza Hut began delivering, Domino's and other places moved in to sell pizzas in many of the towns where Pizza on the Run had once been the only — or at least one of the only, games in town. 

So, they adjusted.

“What saved us was the knowledge of how to control our costs,” Kaiser said. “Now it’s the quality, the crust and that fresh made dough — the big chains can’t do that.”

He said that evidence can be found in one of Pizza on the Run mainstay pizzas; the Monster.

“Grab ahold of that Monster pizza,” he said. “(A chain’s pizza) looks pretty good, but it just doesn’t have that meat and potatoes feel, and we make a consistent product.”

Mattson has appreciated that product ever since she started at the Powell location. She said even though she’s always been in management, she works alongside her crews, jumping from the counter to the oven and the dough as needed.

She was there to help Kaiser get through COVID-19 — he said a business model that already included delivery put them in a good place — and now she’s ready to continue the Pizza on the Run legacy and further her own story; from their food truck to pizzas, and now ownership of the restaurant that started her pizza industry journey.

Her new logo says it all, “Legend Pizza: Where Pizza on the Run lives on.”