July 22, 2024

Boston’s Pizza Restaurant & Sports Bar is putting the final touches on its new restaurant in the Ramada Waterpark and getting ready for a soft opening in early August.

Hotel owners Chad Burleson and Tim Johnson announced plans for the Boston’s franchise, which they also own and will operate, in October 2023. Initially, they hoped to open the restaurant within a few months, but remodeling has taken longer than expected.

The space, which most recently was Boss’ Pizzeria & Sports Bar, has been renovated from top to bottom in the hotel at Russell and West streets near the Sioux Falls Convention Center.

“It’s your upscale casual dining experience,” general manager Tony Cortez said. “It’s a restaurant; it’s a sports bar. Definitely that family aspect and team-based atmosphere is what we’re looking for.”

An oval-shaped bar remains the centerpiece of the dining room, and there are tables and booths to seat about 150 customers.

The new color scheme is gray and black with pops of red.

A video wall of TVs can be used to show one game or several. Altogether, the restaurant and tiki bar, which is next to the indoor waterpark, will have about 50 TVs. The tiki bar area will provide overflow seating for the restaurant.

A “team room” inside Boston’s can seat about 50 diners and will cater to traveling sports teams.

The menu is extensive, with about 80 items that are served for both lunch and dinner.

“Since Boston’s Pizza is the name, we specialize in gourmet pizzas,” Cortez said of the chain that had a location in Sioux Falls several years ago on East 10th Street. Now, there are about 40 locations in the U.S. and Mexico, including one that Johnson also owns and operates in a hotel in Deadwood.

There are 15 signature pizzas and then build-your-own options, all of which come in individual, medium and large sizes.

“We have signature standout dishes pasta dishes in addition to your typical entrees: ribs, steak, salmon, grilled chicken, your burgers, your sandwiches, your wings,” Cortez said.

“Definitely, there’s enough difference there to make us stand out from the rest of the dining experiences in town.”

Almost everything is made from scratch, including the pizza dough.

“Nowadays, a lot of restaurants because of labor constraints and staffing, they get a lot of products already prepared or mass-produced. We’re a scratch kitchen,” Cortez said. “We’re going to be preparing our recipes here, so it’s a much better product and better taste, quality and everything.”

The restaurant will have a full liquor license. Beers on tap will include brands that Boston’s always carries and a few local brews.

It will be open for breakfast and will provide catering for the banquet rooms in the hotel.

While the restaurant will serve hotel guests and people headed to nearby venues like the Denny Sanford Premier Center and Howard Wood Field, it will offer another dining option for workers and residents in the area.

“We think it’s going to be well received,” said John Warwick of ROI Hospitality Services, who is working with the owners and management team as they prepare to open. “We’re underserved as far as good restaurants, restaurants in general, in this area, so I think it’s going to do well during the week for the business, and on the weekends it’s going to be a mix of what’s going on at the hotel and then there’s always something going across the street.”

Hours will be 6:30 a.m. to 11 p.m. Sunday through Thursday and 7 a.m. to midnight Friday and Saturday. The kitchen will be open until the restaurant closes. That will be great for travelers, sous chef Christian Schmidt said, noting “they could have just gotten done with a 500-mile road trip and they’re starving.”

In addition to Warwick’s help, a corporate team from Boston’s will work with the staff for a couple of weeks, starting about a week before the opening.

“I feel like that’s absolutely crucial nowadays for concepts like this to be successful,” Cortez said. He and two of the lead team members in the kitchen already spent three weeks in Dallas for hands-on training.

Customer service will be key with the new team, said Billie Byington, front-of-house manager.

“We’re going to be training the servers to really have that guest experience,” she said. “We want them to come back and back and back. We’re trying to get them to know them by name, call them by name and be able to relate to them. We want that customer service back. We want to be able to provide them with at-home experience without being at home.”

While most of the staff has been hired, managers are looking for additional help in the kitchen. They’re looking for “passionate people” who don’t necessarily need a lot of experience.

“I had someone who brought me on who got me into this, this whole restaurant business, and I’d like to be that for somebody else,” Schmidt said.

Cortez wants to see Boston’s put its mark on the area like the former hotel restaurant Castaways once did and then also in the community.

“It’s a sports bar, and typically most people see a sports bar as a place where they can go watch sports. I want it to feel like more of what defines teams. And that’s a lot of community-building, being a part of the community, building relationships with businesses, and that’s kind of what our target goal is, you know, we want to be involved with a lot of the sporting teams, the academics of our schools. And just in general be a brand that’s recognized all throughout Sioux Falls.”