Customers walking into Leo's Pizza Italiano immediately know who runs the place.
An apron-clad Leo Canaj rushes from behind the counter to greet them by name, hug them, and sometimes even kiss them.
What's harder to figure out is who wants the 53-year-old chef to move out of the Colonial Promenade Lakewood storefront his family has run for more than 18 years — and why.
Leo's serves authentic Italian/Greek cuisine in generous portions. It's a place where lifelong friends celebrate birthdays and kids are invited to try their hand at making a pizza.
Canaj's wife, Kristi, waits on tables and helps in the kitchen. Their two teenage sons wait on customers and bus tables.
The shopping center's current owner, OZ/CLP Lakewood LLC, through its leasing agent Select Strategies Realty, last month sent a letter terminating Leo's lease, effective Dec. 9.
"It's painful. When you run a restaurant, it's a personal kind of business," Canaj said. "I told my boys and it upset both of them. Mostly though, I care about my customers. They are going to miss me."
His customers will not only miss him, they're upset about it. They've started a petition asking whoever is responsible to let Leo's stay.
"I was outraged, really," longtime Leo's customer Jennifer Howell said over lunch. "I want to write a letter to the company myself."
Canaj said he phoned Select Strategies to find out why it terminated his lease, and was passed among three different executives before they stopped returning his calls. One did confirm his restaurant at 5627 San Jose Blvd. would be replaced by a Supercuts hairdressing salon.
"Why didn't they come to negotiate with me?" he said. "If they don't like the price I pay, I can say, 'OK, I can come up.' It bothers me they went behind me."
Leo's customer Kent Schmidt called the decision "a slap in the face to the community."
"This is not a mall," he said. "It's a neighborhood shopping center. You can't have an exclusively national footprint here. It's not what the customers want."
Canaj recently received a document that names Kite Realty Group, an Indianapolis-based real estate investment trust, as the center's new owner.
But, Kite Realty investor relations executive Adam Basch said his company is not responsible.
"We don't own that center yet. We're in the process of buying that," he said. "For the back story on Leo's Pizza, you'll have to ask the current owner what happened."
Basch was aware, though, that the shopping center would be getting a Supercuts.
And, when asked whether his company would like that store as a tenant he said, "Yeah, sure."
Asked whether the company would want Leo's as a tenant, he said, "We don't know anything about the business you're talking about, so it would be hard to say."
Select Strategies CEO Brian Neltner, who is based in Cincinnati, said he didn't know about the situation with Leo's and referred questions to Mary Lou Davis, executive vice president of property management in the company's Florida office.
She did not respond to phone messages last week or this week.
Leo's waitress Lynette Daniel said she grew up with the restaurant in the neighborhood.
"It's a landmark in San Jose," she said. "I came here as a kid. My boyfriend brought me here on a date when I was 15."
Mary Hayden, another regular customer, said she was dumbfounded to hear Leo's had lost its lease.
"It's such short notice, it'll be over in no time," she said. "Maybe they could get another location, but we want it to stay in the same place, near everybody who knows them."