AJ Binning fired up the oven for customers on July 30. The pizza place will also carry vegan pizza and wing options. Photo by Breanna Hardy

Starting a restaurant during a pandemic is no small feat — but a Clovis 18-year-old has taken it in stride.

AJ Binning, a 2020 Clovis High School grad, is ready to open Dough Boys Pizzeria this Friday, which replaces the old Clovis Pizza Junction at 255 N. Clovis Ave. just south of Herndon Avenue.

He grew up working with family beginning at age 13. He started getting paid when he was 16 years old, saving every penny, he said, to start his own business in the future.

“I’ve been working since I was 13, 14 years old,” Binning said. “So I kind of got my drive through there.”

The pizzas feature made-from-scratch sauces, said Kitchen Manager Mitch Lee. The dough will also be made fresh daily, Binning said.

When he started saving his money two years ago, he didn’t have a particular business in mind. He was working at a gas station owned by his brother-in-law, serial entrepreneur Jay Virk. Eventually he learned that Clovis Pizza Junction was closing in late 2020, and the commercial space was available in early 2021.

Binning understood that people in the area were beloved customers of Clovis Pizza Junction, and the former pizza place allowed Binning to serve four of the same pizzas under different names. But the rest of the pizzas are created by Lee.

Along with select top favorites from Clovis Pizza Junction, Binning has kept some of the traditions, including a statuette and empty beer mug honoring fallen soldiers. Signage also honors veterans, as Clovis Pizza Junction had done.

Binning said it is one of his proudest contributions to the new restaurant.

While he runs the restaurant, he will also attend Fresno State as a civil engineer major, and leaves the future open to both starting more restaurants and becoming an engineer.

“My family in general — they’re such hard workers. I feel like it’s kind of in my genetics to work that hard,” Binning said.

He said the challenging parts of opening a restaurant have been preparing himself mentally and getting the restaurant ready for operation. He leaned on personal relationships with the owner of The Curry Pizza Company in Fresno and Clovis for help, and watched YouTube videos and read forums to learn Toast, a web-based restaurant point of sale system.

Hiring the necessary number of employees has been a challenge after the economy reopened. The opening date had been delayed because of staff shortages, but Lee says he is training employees in the kitchen who don’t know how to cook, literally starting from the ground up.

Virk, president of Bottom-Line Development and Binning’s brother-in-law, said the restaurant was supposed to open at the end of May and was delayed because of staffing challenges.

Virk reached out to people they know personally in order to get the restaurant off the ground. It opened last week.

“Luckily because of our good relations we’ve been able to get some staff members back,” Virk said.

Dough Boys Pizzeria is paying workers from $16 to $20 an hour. Virk said the restaurant barely survives at $14 an hour.

“It took him a month and he finally has a staff together, which is a skeleton crew — not even a full crew,” he said.

It put them behind schedule, costing them a month of rent, inventory, bills and utilities with no revenue to offset costs. But Lee said the goal is to open strong and grow a solid customer base in order to grow the menu and the size of the staff.

Age doesn’t play a role in his eyes when it comes to managing a business, Binning said.

“I honestly feel like we’re all equal, so there’s no, ‘Hey you’re younger, go wash the dishes.’ It’s none of that,” he said.

And while he views his accomplishments as a full team effort with his staff, he applied all the vinyl wraps to the windows and interior, and upholstered the dining chairs himself.

Binning encourages people to pursue their passions, whatever their age.

“Time goes by fast — look at Covid,” he said. “This whole two years feels like one whole gigantic year. Definitely don’t waste time.”