• Job: Owners, Rosa's Pizza, Atlanta and east Cobb County

KARL W. RITZLER/Special (ENLARGE)

John Rosa (above) spends most of his time at the popular pizzeria's downtown Atlanta location, while Tony Rosa (below) oversees the new location in east Cobb County.

KARL W. RITZLER/Special (ENLARGE)

While John Rosa also has sold bicycles and cabinets in his career, Tony Rosa has worked in restaurants all his life — just as a teacher predicted when he was in eighth grade.

• What I do: Few things go together better than college, football and pizza. Brothers John and Tony Rosa, owners of the two Rosa's Pizza parlors — one in downtown Atlanta and one in east Cobb County — are capitalizing on college students and sports to sell slices of their New York-style pizza.

John Rosa, 55, spends most of his time at the downtown location, where Georgia State University students and workers from nearby offices form a line that wraps inside the store. Tony Rosa, 53, and his son, Joe, run the new location in an east Cobb shopping center, where families stream in for dinner and can watch college football games, the NFL or other sports on a pair of flat-screen TVs.

Before the first pizza orders can be taken, John Rosa explained, there's plenty of preparation, beginning the night before.

"We have to make sure we have enough pizza crust, calzones and pasta," as well as toppings and salads, he said.

A couple of hours before opening, the massive pizza ovens are turned on, and they will run all day.

"We have to make sure we've got enough slice pies [pizzas that will be cut into eighths and sold by the slice]. The oven can only hold a certain number of pies," he said.

Once the doors open, "there's a lot of running around," he said, as the staff behind the counter take orders, add toppings, pop slices into the oven and prepare nonpizza orders.

Ordering the ingredients "is the easy part," John said. "I have a list. You know how much you go through and how much you need. After 17 years, it's like going to Publix. I don't even think about it."

All pizzas are made from scratch, John and Tony said.

It helps that Tony is also the manufacturer's representative for one of the suppliers, Cremosa Food Co. Besides supplying his own restaurants, he takes orders for several Italian restaurants and pizza shops in the metro area.

• What got me interested in this: Tony Rosa is the one who started in the pizza business, beginning as a dishwasher in an Italian restaurant on Long Island in New York. "I helped the cook with the antipasto, and the boss liked my work and me," Tony said.

Perhaps his career was destiny. Tony said that when he was in eighth grade, he was asked to predict what he'd do for a living for an entry in a yearbook. He put down "undecided." The teacher, however, changed his answer to "own my own pizza place."

The Rosa family ran bicycle shops in New York, and John and Tony followed their parents to Atlanta in the 1970s. While John ran a bicycle shop here, Tony began working in pizzerias.

Together, they opened the downtown location in 1990 and watched the area gentrify and grow, with the Olympics in 1996 and, later, the expansion of Georgia State. They opened the Cobb location this year.

• Best part of my job: "I like to talk to people," John said. "You know people for 20 years. We kid around. The day goes fast."

Tony added that the best part for him is "seeing people enjoy their pizza."

• Most challenging part: "Getting through a busy Friday," John said. "We'll do 30 to 40 pies, then the rush comes."

"Keeping good help," Tony said. "And maintaining consistency" of the pizzas.

Some employees have been with Rosa's for 12 years, while others don't last nearly that long, they said.

• What people don't know about my job: "How much cheese we go through," John said.

The downtown pizzeria uses 700 to 800 pounds of cheese a week, and, lately, the price has been going up.

• What keeps me going: "Looking forward to 6 o'clock," John said. "It's a job, and, at the end of the day, you can go home and relax. . . . You feel better when everything went smoothly."

• Preparation needed for this job: "You've got to have a personality and know how to deal with people," John said. "The key to business is being nice to your customers. That's your job — more than collecting the two bucks for pizza. That's why we've succeeded in 17 years here."

You don't need formal training to run a business, he said, but it does take hard work. "You can't be lazy."

Between stays in Atlanta, John also ran a cabinetry and contracting business in Florida.

The bicycle shop he owned in Smyrna was among the first in the metro area to have a dirt track for riding BMX bikes.

Tony has spent his working life at Italian and pizza restaurants in New York and Atlanta.

- By Karl W. Ritzler, for ajcjobs. Got an interesting job that you love? E-mail your story to jobseditor@ajc.com.