PAIROTT HEAD LIQUOR

Here’s a business idea. 

Hang out with your mom all day every day.

For Kevin Fry, it sounded perfect.

“She’s my best friend, she really is,” Kevin said of his mother, Denise Grasso.  “I am so blessed to have been raised by great parents and now to get this opportunity to own a business together … it’s just a dream come true.”

Fry, a former funeral home director, and Grasso, a longtime educator, have owned Pairott Head Liquor for nearly a decade. Taking over the business together was the culmination of a dream … or maybe a half joke of a dream.

“We had always joked about owning a business together once I retired,” Grasso said. “We thought maybe we’d own a funeral home together. So when Kevin called me to ask if I wanted to do this, I was in. I thought it would be a lot of fun and very meaningful doing it with my son.”

Pairott Head sells pretty much all you’d want or need from a liquor store. Local and regional beer, whiskey, rum, gin, wine, cigars and more. If they don’t have it, odds are they can get it. 

“What matters the most to us is what our customers want,” Fry said. “It’s not about what we like or what we want to sell. We’re here for our community.”

The mother-son working relationship is unique. And maybe even more unique … it works really well. The bond really is that strong.

“Kevin and I have always been close,” Grasso said. “We’ve had a strong relationship since he was a little kid. Not every son wants to grow up and spend every day working with his mom, but we love it.”

Along with their special family bond, they also share a love of hard work.

“We both know how to work,” Fry said. “We have strong work ethics. Right away, when we started, we went to work teaching ourselves how to run a liquor store.”

They’re also blessed with a really great staff.

“We’re very lucky to have a great team with us, as well,” Fry said. “We couldn’t have done this without the team here. No way.”

Pairott Head is located at 1812 N Broadway St in Pittsburg.