CowPies Pizza Co. finds enthusiastic customer base in Warner Robins, plans Macon location

The owners of CowPies Pizza Co., which opened in late 2022, say they’ve found a supportive community in Warner Robins as they prepare to open their second location in Macon.

Throughout the last few months, word of mouth and rave reviews on social media have kept the new takeout restaurant busy.

Co-owners Josh Walsh, John Wright and J.P. Williams joined together to create CowPies Pizza Co. last year.

“Long story short, John was actually a customer of mine at another restaurant I worked at and one day I just opened up to him and told him what I wanted to do and he said what he wanted to do,” said Walsh, who has been in the pizza business for 11 years. “So John, J.P. and I got together and we knew we wanted to do pizza, we just didn’t know what the name was gonna be. So we sat and thought and one day J.P.’s wife said, ‘I’ve got a funny name but it’d never work.’ And [we agreed] it’d never work. But we just kept thinking it was like, you know what, it’s going to work. That’s how we came up with CowPies.”

The restaurant’s name isn’t the only thing that’s unique about CowPies Pizza Co. Williams said customers have grown a liking for their original pizza topping combinations.

Popular specialty pizzas include the Cowboy, with white sauce, steak, mushrooms, green peppers and onions, as well as the Cheeseburger pizza.

“It’s ground beef and onions and then we cook it with cheese and the special sauce base,” Walsh said. “Then when it comes out of the oven, we put lettuce, tomato and pickles on top and you feel like you’re eating a cheeseburger in a slice.”

Other favorites include their smoked wings with sauces like mango habanero and kickin’ bourbon and desserts like Cheesecake Brownie Stromboli and Cowboy Cookies.

Williams said the community’s support has kept the restaurant busy, sometimes with wait times over an hour.

“Everyone’s been very patient with us as we have grown large quickly,” he said. “So wait times have been long, but we’ve done everything that we possibly can do to reduce those wait times. And there’s a lot of camaraderie in the store.

“It’s been really magical to watch it in here with 30-to-40 customers at one time standing in here at one time waiting on pizza and waiting over an hour sometimes and just listen to the camaraderie and customers helping out other customers.”

The co-owners said the restaurant’s customer service and family friendly environment have helped them build a loyal customer base.

“We also choose the best ingredients for fresh pizza,” Walsh said. “We make our dough every day and smoke our wings every day. That’s what people love and the freshness of the ingredients.”

CowPies Pizza Co., located at 6001 Watson Boulevard, is the fourth pizza joint to open at the location since 2019, but the co-owners are optimistic.

The location was previously home to a Dough Bros’ Pizza Joint, which first opened last March. Walsh, Wright and Williams later purchased it about six months ago before launching CowPies Pizza Co.

“It was definitely a factor we were looking at before we took it over here, we knew that we were the fourth place to show up in the same spot,” Williams said. “But having relationships and having other businesses here and in Middle Georgia, we just started delivering Josh’s ingredients on pizzas to folks and people just started falling in love with it.

“We started serving some of the local businesses that we already do business with, handing out some pizza and just inviting them to come in and try it out. That’s really where all of it started.”

CowPies Pizza Co. is currently preparing to launch its second location at 3955 Arkwright Road in Macon. Williams said they plan to open it in the next 30-45 days.

The upcoming Macon location also previously operated as a Dough Bros’ Pizza Joint.