Ex-airline workers seek safe landing with deli
By Bonnie Pfister
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Monday, January 12, 2009
"Not waiting for the ball to drop." That's a phrase Brian Peltz frequently uses when he describes his career approach after Sept. 11, 2001.
That was when he was passenger service manager for US Airways' three flights between Pittsburgh and Europe. Peltz and his wife, Milica, then a US Airways flight attendant, weathered two rounds of pay cuts before selling their spacious suburban home in Moon. They downsized with their sons into a smaller house in Mt. Lebanon, choosing the community for its well-regarded school district.
"I didn't want to wait for someone to come knocking on the door to say, 'You can't pay your mortgage,'" said Peltz, now 42, and starting his second independent business since the terrorist attacks sent shockwaves across the airline industry.
Peltz last week opened the doors on The Lunchbox Of Pittsburgh, a kid-friendly deli/convenience store across 44th Street from the new Children's Hospital in Lawrenceville. Right now his clientele is mostly construction workers and a few elderly neighborhood residents. Peltz said he hopes to work out the bugs out of the enterprise before the hospital's May opening.
That's after four years of running a part-time in-home furniture assembly business, occasionally hiring other anxious US Airways employees to assist.
