Less than a year and a half after Pizza 51 helped kick-start a new wave of restaurant development in downtown Olathe, the longtime Kansas City pizza business has changed hands.
Anthony St. Clair and Spencer Shaw have purchased Pizza 51 from founders Jason and Shannon Pryor, ending the couple’s 22-year run with the restaurant they started in a converted Kansas City gas station in 2004. The sale includes both current Pizza 51 locations — the original at 5060 Oak St. in Kansas City and the much newer restaurant at 200 S. Kansas Ave. in downtown Olathe — along with roughly 40 employees.
For Olathe, the sale comes unusually early in the life of a restaurant that quickly became part of the city’s larger effort to bring people back downtown. Pizza 51 opened its Olathe location June 25, 2025, inside a former Phillips 66 service station near Kansas Avenue and Loula Street. The building, dating to the early 1960s and remembered by longtime residents as Spruytte’s 66 Service, was renovated while retaining much of its service-station character. Garage doors, historic photographs and other automotive touches were incorporated into the restaurant, creating a local counterpart to Pizza 51’s original Kansas City location, which also occupies a former gas station.
The Olathe project was more than simply another restaurant opening. Jason Pryor worked with Kevin Timmons, owner of Nick & Jake’s, on the redevelopment, turning the small former auto shop into a larger restaurant with indoor seating and an outdoor patio. The redevelopment expanded the original 1,715-square-foot building by another 1,690 square feet, creating a 3,405-square-foot restaurant with an 880-square-foot patio. The City Council previously authorized up to $1.085 million in taxable industrial revenue bonds connected to the project.
When Pizza 51 opened, it was viewed as one of the first visible pieces of downtown Olathe’s restaurant revival. City leaders had spent years talking about creating a downtown district where residents could eat, gather and stay after work or community events instead of leaving the area for entertainment elsewhere. Pizza 51 was the first of several highly anticipated restaurants to actually open, and Pryor described the business at the time as a kind of first seed that could encourage additional development around it.
Now the people behind that first seed are stepping away.
Jason and Shannon Pryor opened the first Pizza 51 on Sept. 15, 2004, after nearly two years of planning. Jason Pryor had spotted the vacant gas station at 51st and Oak streets and believed the location could work as a college-oriented pizza restaurant near UMKC. Instead, Pizza 51 grew into something broader, attracting families, neighborhood residents and generations of employees in addition to students.
The Pryors later expanded into Fairway with Pizza 51 West, which operated from 2011 until 2019. They also became partners in Milwaukee Delicatessen Company in downtown Kansas City, where Pizza 51 recipes became part of the menu. The Pryors and partner Jon Gerner will continue owning Milwaukee Delicatessen Company, but that restaurant is being separated from Pizza 51 and will no longer carry Pizza 51 branding.
Pryor said the decision to sell was tied largely to where he and Shannon are in their lives after more than two decades in the restaurant business. Their children are getting older, the couple is approaching its 25th wedding anniversary and Pryor said he is ready for more flexibility and time with his family.
“Restaurant years do add up,” Pryor said while discussing the sale.
The new owners are not newcomers to Kansas City restaurants.
Spencer Shaw is the longtime general manager who earlier this year purchased Ponak’s Mexican Restaurant & Bar on Southwest Boulevard, preserving another longtime Kansas City restaurant through an ownership transition. Shaw said his approach at Ponak’s is to maintain what customers already love while looking for opportunities to grow the business.
Anthony St. Clair brings more than 15 years of business development and management experience and recently earned a doctorate in business administration. He had been looking for an opportunity to own a business when he learned Pizza 51 was available. St. Clair initially contacted Shaw for advice about purchasing and operating a restaurant; those conversations eventually turned into the two men becoming partners in the deal.
St. Clair is expected to take the leading role in Pizza 51’s day-to-day operation, while Shaw remains primarily focused on Ponak’s.
For customers concerned that the ownership change could mean Pizza 51 becomes an entirely different restaurant, the new owners say that is not the plan.
Shaw and St. Clair intend to keep the core menu and identity that built Pizza 51’s following. Instead, they plan to invest in technology, improve the restaurant’s social-media presence, attract new customers and strengthen the business’s connection with surrounding communities. That community effort is expected to be especially important in Olathe, where the restaurant has been open for only about 16 months and is still establishing itself as downtown development continues around it.
The new owners have also discussed eventually adding more Pizza 51 locations, although expansion is not the immediate priority. Their first task will be learning the existing operation and making sure the Kansas City and Olathe restaurants are running the way they want before considering additional stores.
That makes the ownership change different from many restaurant sales.
Pizza 51 is not closing. The Olathe location is not being replaced by another concept. And customers should not expect a dramatically different menu when they walk through the doors.
Instead, one of downtown Olathe’s newest restaurants is beginning its second chapter only months after completing its first.
For the Pryors, it closes a 22-year chapter that began with an idea for selling pizza out of an abandoned gas station. For St. Clair and Shaw, it is the chance to inherit a recognizable Kansas City restaurant brand and determine where it goes next.
And for downtown Olathe, the Pizza 51 sign at Kansas and Loula is staying put. The names behind it are what have changed.
Something Different Media Group
