Tea barbecue restaurant’s success leads to new building

Aug. 23, 2019

A barbecue joint in Tea plans to more than double in size with a new building featuring a rooftop patio and will expand its restaurant and catering menus.

Squealer’s Smoke Shack has started construction for its new restaurant near the GrandStay Hotel and Suites on the northeast edge of town.

“It should move along pretty quickly,” said Dustin Kuipers, who owns the business with his wife, Andrea, and his parents, Lowell and Shelley Kuipers. “The goal is to be in after the first of the year.”

Squealer’s started with a food truck in 2014 and opened the restaurant in a retail center in 2016 because it needed a “full-fledged kitchen” to keep up with catering orders. Within the restaurant’s first year, the family leased more room in the building, and “now we’re out of space,” Kuipers said. “We keep getting busier and busier.”

The family is designing the new location to include expanded offerings.

“We’re playing around with the menu right now,” he said. “We’ll offer a little more variety. Not everybody likes smoked meat.”

They’re planning to add grilled chicken breasts, hamburgers and possibly steaks. The restaurant will add Sunday hours and feature a Sunday morning brunch, possibly as a buffet, and a Bloody Mary bar. Squealer’s has a full liquor license.

They’ll add a rooftop patio, sand volleyball courts and a video-lottery casino.

With the patio space, the restaurant will seat 400, compared with 100 in the current location, Kuipers said.

He expects the staff of 20 to grow to 60. Hiring likely will begin in November.

The 38-foot-long red trailer will continue to be a part of the business.

“We’ll keep it,” Kuipers said. “We use it for a lot of caterings. A lot of people like to have the truck and trailer there.”

It’s also used for public events, including the Sidewalk Arts Festival on Sept. 7 in Sioux Falls.

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Tea barbecue restaurant’s success leads to new building

A barbecue joint in Tea plans to more than double in size with a new building featuring a rooftop patio and to expand its restaurant and catering menus.

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