Aug. 8, 2024

Boss’ Pizza & Chicken in Sioux Falls has a new owner, allowing the founder to dedicate more time to expanding the franchise.

Jeremy Seefeldt sold the central Minnesota Avenue restaurant and the delivery outlet at 26th Street and Marion Road to Ryan Bitterman at the beginning of the year.

Bitterman has had a lifelong career in the industry in Sioux Falls, but this is the first restaurant he has owned. He started working as a teenager at Godfather’s Pizza and served as a manager at Johnny Carino’s and Chevys Fresh Mex for two decades.

“He understands as much or more about the food industry as I do,” said Seefeldt who opened his first restaurant in 2005.

“Basically, with all the franchising and everything that we’ve been doing, I just haven’t had time to focus on the local stores as much,” he said.

That shift in focus led him to close Boss’ Pizzeria & Sports Bar in Tea, which he opened after buying the former Tea Steak House in late 2021. A third Boss’ in Sioux Falls, which was in the Ramada Waterpark, closed in October 2023 when the hotel did not renew the lease, opting instead to open Boston’s Pizza.

He also sold Boss’ in Rapid City to his operating partner recently, and that owner is expanding with a second location in another hotel that’s expected to open this month.

Seefeldt still owns restaurants in Des Moines; Fargo and Grand Forks, North Dakota; and North Platte, Nebraska.

The newest city for a Boss’ franchise is Plymouth, Minnesota, a western suburb of the Twin Cities. Thomas Moore of Sioux Falls is opening the restaurant at a Ramada hotel that includes the Plymouth Playhouse. It’s expected to open in September.

Other franchise locations include Brookings, Yankton, Keystone and Iowa’s Okoboji. Seefeldt said he has leads for Aberdeen; Omaha; Dickinson, North Dakota; Mason City, Iowa; and Springfield, Missouri. Those opportunities are in hotels or arcade centers.

“I just need to find franchisees for them,” Seefeldt said, whose team includes minority owner Josh Benz, Adam Wilka and Brooke Barhite.

All Boss’ franchise agreements include 1st & Tenders, a ghost kitchen concept that Seefeldt launched last fall in Sioux Falls and expanded to all locations earlier this year. The menu features Boss’ hand-breaded chicken tenders, bone-in wings, fries and other sides.

“It’s slowly but surely getting a little bit better,” he said of traction for the new brand. “It’s slowly catching on in some of those places, Des Moines probably more than anything. They understand ghost kitchens a little more there.”

He also has been busy overseeing the creation of apps for Boss’ and 1st & Tenders to make it easier for customers to order food for takeout or delivery. Those launched this week and can be downloaded on Google Play or the Apple App Store.

Seefeldt is excited about the future for Boss’ in Sioux Falls under new ownership.

“We had not been great at service, mostly because I haven’t had time for it. … He’s bringing a new sense of service to the quality product we’ve had over the years,” he said of Bitterman.

That’s definitely the focus, Bitterman said.

“We’re working real hard to get the community behind us again on service and delivery,” he said. “We want to focus on an hour or less delivery time. That’s our biggest focus. The food’s always been really good.”

It’s a big territory to cover for the two locations – and one that keeps growing with the city. Delivery is available until 3 a.m. daily.

“We’re always hiring, looking for good people,” Bitterman said.

The restaurant on Minnesota Avenue includes an old-school feature for pizzerias: There’s a pinball room with more than a dozen machines.

With more than 30 specialty pizzas, “I’d be lying if I told you I’d tried them all,” Bitterman said. He said his favorite is a toss-up between breakfast pizza and the Philly, which he loads with extra meat and pickled jalapenos.

A Thanksgiving tradition will continue with the new ownership. For over a decade, Seefeldt has offered a free chicken dinner for takeout on the holiday and now has an agreement with Bitterman that will allow him to rent the space every year to keep doing that.