Elizabeth McKenna, one of the owners of Mama Barone’s Pizza, 9209 Broadway Ave. in Brookfield, said she vividly remembers the moment on Aug. 21 when her husband and co-owner, Mike Triplett, first encountered a Sonic the Hedgehog plushie a customer had left behind.
“It was a super chaotic dinner rush, and Mike came up from the back, and our cashier was working that day. He saw it on the table, and he said, ‘Hey, do you know whose this is?’ and she says, ‘Yes,’” McKenna told the Landmark.
The cashier remembered the family to whom the toy belonged and said she would make sure to return it when she gave them the pizza slices they had ordered, McKenna said.
“She was really busy, and somebody else gave them their slices, and she never got a chance to return Sonic,” she said. “We ended up pulling the ticket of the people we thought it belonged to, and we were wrong. Throughout all the chaos, we couldn’t figure out which ticket Sonic belonged to. After a couple of phone calls that failed of trying to get a hold of the parents, we decided to post a picture on Facebook.”
In the three weeks since then, the single post has turned into an eight-part saga following the adventures of Sonic — the super-speedy, talking, blue hedgehog who originated in the 1991 video game bearing his name — in the pizza shop.
“As we were cleaning up at the end of the night, we had one slice of pizza leftover. I said, let’s take a picture with Sonic and the slice, and we’ll tell whatever worried kid and worried parents that we fed him dinner,” McKenna said. “I wanted to make sure the parent knew, A, that he was there, and, B, that I will be holding him for pickup at opening time the next day.”
From there, Sonic ate a bowl of spaghetti and meatballs before staring longingly out the window for his family. By the fourth post, McKenna and her staff had put Sonic to work; they photographed him with an uncooked pizza he made, in front of the sink where he washed the dishes and even strapped into a car, ready to make a delivery.
At first, McKenna said she kept the posts to the Brookfield Connections group on Facebook, but soon, she began posting directly to Mama Barone’s page after deducing the family might be from another nearby town in an effort to reach the owners.
“We’re a takeout restaurant, so this little Sonic was important enough to leave the car for the two-minute walk to Mama Barone’s to pick up their pizza,” she said. “I’m thinking, for sure, this Sonic is super important to some kid who left it here by accident. We’ll post it one time, and he’ll be reunited with his owners.”
Since then, word of the plushie has spread through the community. One family with kids who are big fans of Sonic brought in plushies of other franchise characters — his friends Tails and Knuckles the Echidna as well as his rival Shadow the Hedgehog — to get a photo with the pizzeria’s plushie, which also made its way into the online saga.
“I’ve also had people request that Sonic makes their pizza when I’m taking their order. I’ve had people request that Sonic delivers their order. I’ve had a couple of people, at least twice while I’ve been here, that want to take a picture with Sonic on top of their pizza,” McKenna said. “Sonic has blown up, big-time. Although I still want him to reach his owner, I feel like I might have to get my own Sonic afterwards. He’s a sensation.”
Now, Sonic has become a bit of an inside joke among the staff, she said.
“At the end of the night, when someone needs to pick up the slack on dishes, everybody says, ‘Where’s Sonic?’” she said. “Same thing with deliveries.”
She said, due to the plushie’s popularity, she plans to use it to promote some upcoming specials at the restaurant, which she and Triplett bought on Sept. 3, 2024. In celebration of the anniversary, Mama Barone’s collected names for a raffle from customers in the first week of September and will be drawing names every Tuesday for prizes like a free pizza delivery or merchandise.
McKenna said she and her husband also sought out the pizzeria’s top customer from their first year of operation and bought her dinner as a way to say thank you.
“It’s a very supportive community when it comes to a family-owned business,” she said of Brookfield.
When they bought the restaurant, McKenna said she was working full-time as an emergency room technician at Loyola Hospital, but she dropped down to part-time last December to help with the pizzeria before leaving that job entirely in April to work full-time. Buying a 40-year-old restaurant has had its challenges, she said — like getting used to the 1956 Fauld’s oven that came with it — but after the first year, she and Triplett have gotten into the swing of things.
“We’ve been doing great. We’ve gotten busier. We expanded our hours: Starting this weekend, we’re going to start staying open till 11 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays and until 9 p.m. on Sundays because we’re getting so much busier,” she said. “We’re enjoying being business owners in Brookfield so far for sure.”
