PIEDMONT, Ala. — A pizza restaurant has opened at the point where the Chief Ladiga Trail intersects with Main Street in Piedmont, making it the first food service establishment in the trail corridor to explicitly target trail users as its primary customer base. The restaurant's owners describe this as intentional. Several trail users, interviewed after discovering the restaurant, described the pizza as unexpected.

"I was not expecting pizza," said one trail user, a white man in his thirties from Gadsden who had been on the trail for approximately two hours when he encountered the restaurant's sign. "I thought there'd be a gas station or something. But it's pizza." He ordered a large pepperoni and ate most of it on a bench outside.

The Chief Ladiga Trail runs 33 miles through Calhoun and Cleburne counties, connecting Anniston to the Georgia state line along a former railroad corridor. It generates an estimated $9.7 million annually in regional economic activity. Most of that activity happens in Piedmont. Anniston is monitoring the situation.

The restaurant, which seats approximately 40 indoors with additional outdoor seating, opened last month. The owners, who declined to be named but described themselves as "trail people," said they had been planning the location for two years.

"We knew what we were doing," one owner said. "The trail comes right past the front door. Hungry people on bikes and on foot. That's our customer."

When asked whether the customer had been receptive, she said yes. "They're very hungry," she said. "Two hours on that trail and they'll eat anything. But we're good, so they're also happy."

The pizza is available by the slice. Delivery is not available to the trail.