It begins with the sauce and the rest can sound pretty easy at Jake’s Pizza.

The Jake’s Pizza in Albert Lea is the original of a chain of independently owned stores across southern Minnesota. The Albert Lea location started in 1964 when Ernie and Rose Jacobson introduced the area to a Jake’s Pizza.

The recipe has remained the same since — why change a good thing?

“It’s the same pizza that it was back then,” said Bill Anderson, one of the three current owners. “It’s a good product. It sells itself.”

The sauce contains spices imported from Italy and is sold to each of the Jake’s chains by Ernie’s son, Mark Jacobson. After the spices and sauce, everything remains as the original recipe called at Jake’s in Albert Lea.

“The thing about Jake’s when we came into it — you never change the recipe,” Anderson said. “You never change the way you prepare anything. Why would you? It’s a proven product.”

It’s the quality that has set Jake’s apart from other pizza places and kept it vibrant despite the presence of chain restaurants.

The ingredients remain fresh, nothing frozen. The dough is made from scratch and the meat comes from Jordahl Meats in Manchester. The people of Albert Lea have come to enjoy the predictability of a Jake’s pizza.

And as far as preparing the pizzas, the motto is “Make ‘em like we’re gonna eat them,” Anderson said. Meaning there’s no specific amount of any ingredient to any pizza, it’s all by feel and look.

Jake’s Pizza in Albert Lea can be like a religion to some. The slightest changes arouse suspicion that somehow it will change the quality of pizza.

From a new oven to painting the walls, the regulars notice and don’t hold back their opinions. Some worried the new oven would change the taste of the pizza. Even the owners Anderson, Jim Johnson and Greg Undahl, had their concerns, but nothing changed taste-wise. The new oven did increase Jake’s cooking capacity, going from 12 pizzas at one time to 28, which decreased delivery times as well.

Even when the owners have tried to tinker with the recipe the regulars picked up on it. When the owners experimented with changing the cheese from the sliced version they’ve used since the beginning to shredded, a regular who came in as a taste tester knew the difference right away, Johnson said.

Keeping fresh ingredients and using block cheese can run up the expenses, but any chance of switching to cut costs is like blasphemy.

“We certainly spend more money than we have to, but we spend that money to maintain the pizza,” Anderson said. “It’s a non-issue.”

Anderson, Johnson and Undahl bought the Albert Lea institution about four years ago from Anderson’s sister, Lynnel Lorenzen. Lorenzen bought the restaurant from Butch Donovan when she was 22. Both Anderson and Lorenzen worked at Jake’s during high school, Lorenzen started when she was 15 as a waitress and quickly moved into other areas of the business. Lorenzen started cooking the pizzas one evening when her sister missed her shift. It was just the beginning of Lorenzen’s introduction to the inner workings of Jake’s Pizza.

“If you keep the whole circle going, it’s always going to work,” said Lorenzen, who still works days at Jake’s.

Jake’s has 26 employees and remains Albert Lea’s first choice in pizza.

“Forty-plus years of people putting blood and sweat into the business and we’re capitalizing on their efforts,” Anderson said.