Long-awaited pizza restaurant opens in Historic Downtown Perry

PERRY– Ghost Runner Pizza opened its doors to the public this past weekend. 

The restaurant, located at 742 Main St., is co-owned by brothers Wade and Cody Walker. Wade Walker’s wife Sydney also works there full-time. 

Opening a restaurant in general was fairly new to both owners. 

“It was a lot more in depth in terms of the construction and build out phase, and it was kinda new for me and my brother,” Wade Walker said. “The build out took about seven months, and then you have to go through the proper permitting and all of the proper inspections, so it’s definitely a lot more than you would think when it comes to opening up a restaurant.”

Ghost Runner started getting their name out there with pop-up shops for their friends about two years ago. 

“We did that for our friends and just gave away some pizza and it was really fun and really enjoyed it,” he said. “We’ve always sort of been into food and cooking as Cody and I have had experience with food industry jobs.” 

Walker said they then decided to offer up their pizza to the public. They partnered with a few restaurants to have a pop-up shop. 

“Pretty quick after that, we said, ‘we just need to do a restaurant,’” he said. 

The plan made sense as they were becoming weary of carrying their gear around to different places. They wanted to have their own place to serve their pizza, and now they finally do.  

“Obviously the restaurant is tiring and we’re working hard in different ways, but it is still nice every night to lock the door and leave,” he said. 

Walker feels good and is relieved that they are finally open after all this time.

“Looking back on it now, it feels like you kind of accomplished something just getting open, but it’s definitely a lot of work to get to the point of actually running a business,” he said. 

Ghost Runner has five pizzas and a rotating special. These pizzas include the Margherita, Pepperoni, Sausage, Pesto, and Garlic. The current special they had this past week was the BLT pizza. In addition to pizza, the restaurant also serves a kale Caesar salad and ice cream sandwiches for dessert. Patrons can also order beer and wine. 

“The goal was to keep the menu simple, rotate a pizza each week to have something different as it’s not a build your own,” he said. 

Walker said there is potential for them to expand the menu in time, but will stay more selective on the pizza front. 

“I do think we will likely in the future add another salad or add some type of breadstick or garlic knots or some kind of other thing besides just pizza,” he said. “For now, this is the best thing we can do.” 

According to Walker, the atmosphere and the pizza are what make their restaurant unique among other places around town. 

“I think that we offer an experience where you can come in and sit down, have a beer and enjoy pizza with your friends and your family,” he said. “We’re using very fresh ingredients and also we only make so much dough for the day. We don’t carry it over to the next day.” 

The pizza crust is made out of sourdough. According to Walker, they are the only ones in Middle Georgia that use a sourdough crust.

“Nothing is ever frozen and we don’t even have a freezer for food other than the one we use for ice cream sandwiches,” he said. “We make the dough in house, we make the sauce in house as everything is kind of made in house as far as the main pizza goes.”

Walker described Ghost Runner as a mom-and-pop shop.

“The owners are there everyday working a station,” he said. “Cody is on the oven and I’m either on the register or running food to tables, so I feel like all of that kind of makes a pretty substantial difference from our pizzeria to the other chain pizzerias in the area. 

Walker is hopeful to be the go-to pizza spot here in Perry. 

“The vision is that we want people to come once a week,” he said. “We want people to come to us when they want pizza.” 

The response from their opening weekend has been very positive. Thursday and Friday, Ghost Runner sold out very quickly. 

“I think that the opening weekend went really well as far as our expectations go,” he said “We do want to get faster and be able to do more and serve more people as we kinda got a little backed up on Thursday and Friday night. Other than that, I feel like it was really good.”

Walker said that the cool thing about working in Perry is that the people want to see you succeed. 

“Nobody is coming in there to partially judge a new restaurant. Everybody is excited that there is another offering as the food scene here is growing,” he said. 

Starting out, Ghost Runner Pizza, located at 742 Main St., is open Thursday through Sunday from 5 to 9 p.m.