Jet’s Pizza co-founder and President Eugene (Gene) Jetts Jr., who started the chain with his brother John in 1978, died Friday, Crain's Detroit Business reports. He was 60.
Sherri Welch of Crain's reports that Jetts died after a battle with cancer.
Welch writes that Jetts put $20,000 of his life savings down on a former party store location in Sterling Heights to begin what turned into a successful pizza chain.
The company website states:
Jet’s Pizza has rapidly risen through the ranks to become the twelfth largest pizza chain in the nation, by sales (PMQ, 2012), with over 300 locations and plans for rapid future growth.
Eugene Jetts and his brother John Jetts opened the first Jet’s Pizza in 1978 in Sterling Heights, Michigan. Fourteen years later, after opening and operating several successful “Jet’s Pizza” stores, a corporation called Jet’s America was formed with business partners Jim Galloway, Jr. and Jeff Galloway.
