Tuesday, September 13, 2011

Pizza place for sale

I'm intending this mostly for my more bakery minded cousins, but some of you might be interested as well. In the town of Caldwell, KS there's a fairly popular restaurant called "Steve's Pizza". The owner is looking to retire.

"Steve's Pizza" sits at the corner of the two major streets through town. The location is good enough they put the big Caldwell arch right out outside the front door. Just looking at these pictures you can see that they made enough to be able to keep the place up fairly nicely. And previous visits have shown me that this wasn't just clean up done for the festival.




Caldwell is a bit isolated. You might be hesitant to try to move somewhere so remote and try to run a business. The remoteness is something of a benefit. Since people can't just pop out to Wichita or Tulsa easily several businesses you wouldn't expect in a town so small had to appear. The hospital is one of the most telling examples. There's also a family clinic just up the street from it. There's a couple of lumber stores, a flower store, welding, sign printing, a Radio Shack, a Napa Auto Parts, a couple of other restaurants, a small airport, and on like that.

The school is pretty good for it's size. I heard someone say that the school's whole population is only around 100. They have a secondary school, but I'm not sure where their primary is. So, yeah, small, but well equipped. Their gym was better than where I went to school and my school was considered to be pretty well off. Mind you, I didn't see much besides the gym. But considering the condition it was in, the bells and whistles, and the fact that the acoustics were good enough for a band to play without horrible echos and distortions was pretty good.

And I didn't see a great deal of For Sale signs around town. Which tells me that they weren't hit by the housing crisis like everyone else was. You can get a place in town where you can get around town on foot, bike, or Segway, or you can get a place in the surrounding countryside with a bit of acreage and drive in.

Alright, I may have thought about this a bit much. But I've got some friends who have been talking about getting our whole gang from college and taking over some small town somewhere. If only we could find a business that people of our skills could run from the middle of nowhere and turn a profit.

2 comments:

Der_Muffinmann said...

Don't know if you heard, but Big John's Pizza in Clearwater, KS is closed. It had a good 10-12 year run. I really enjoyed working there when I did, and I thought the food, atmosphere, and service were quite good.

Ibid said...

There you go. You have the experience and a firm grounding in yeasts. All you lack now is the desire to move to a cowtown.