Peter Boniface is the Owner and Co-founder of Yampa Sandwich Company. He grew up in Sandwich, Massachusetts, where he learned how to cook and blend flavors from his mother. He started in the restaurant business in 1983 and moved to Steamboat Springs, Colorado in 1991 with the intention of being a ski bum. Seeing the need for a local quality delicatessen, Peter and David Pepin opened the first Yampa Sandwich Company in 1999.
Here’s a Glimpse of What You’ll Hear:
- Peter Boniface discusses some of Yampa Sandwich Company’s newest menu items and how the ideas are conceived
- How learning to cook from his mother influenced Peter
- Peter recalls his entry into the restaurant industry and his first job preparing food
- Why Peter moved from the northeast to Colorado
- What was the original name and purpose of the Yampa Sandwich Company?
- How has the restaurant evolved and expanded over time?
- The secret to the Yampa Sandwich Company’s success
In this episode…
While customers frequent their favorite restaurants for the food and atmosphere, they are usually unaware of how the brand evolved to its current state. Many restaurants have unique origin stories, starting out as mere fractions of what they are now.
With six Colorado locations and one in Wyoming — Yampa Sandwich Company is one brand with a tremendous origin story. According to Peter Boniface, one of the restaurant’s founders, the brand’s original purpose was to provide sandwiches for rafting guides in Steamboat, Colorado while operating under the name Backcountry Provisions. There was such a demand and appreciation for the food and service that they ended up opening a sandwich shop and then expanding to Jackson, WY, and Fort Collins, CO. The store in Fort Collins struggled, Peter says, because customers primarily thought the brand rented out snowshoes. As a result, the restaurant’s name changed to Yampa Sandwich Company.
On this episode of the Top Business Leaders Show, Peter Boniface, Owner and Founder of Yampa Sandwich Company, joins Rise25’s Chad Franzen to discuss the fascinating evolution of Yampa Sandwich Company. He talks about why he opened a restaurant after moving to Colorado to be a ski bum, the original purpose for the brand and why its name changed, and why customers keep coming back to Yampa Sandwich Company.
Resources mentioned in this episode:
- Peter Boniface on LinkedIn
- Yampa Sandwich Company
- Sandwich, Massachusetts
- David Pepin on LinkedIn
- Chad Franzen on LinkedIn
- SpotOn
- Rise25
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Episode Transcript
Intro 0:04
Welcome to the Top Business Leaders Show powered by Rise25 Media. We feature top founders, executives and business leaders from all over the world.
Chad Franzen 0:04
Chad Franzen here, co-host for the show where we feature top restaurateurs, investors and business leaders. This is part of our SpotOn series. SpotOn has the best in class payment platform for retail and they have a flagship solution called spot on restaurant, where they combined marketing software and payments all in one. They’ve served everyone from larger chains like Dairy Queen and Subway to small mom and pop restaurants. To learn more, go to spot on.com This episode is brought to you by Rise25. We help b2b business to get businesses to get ROI clients referrals and strategic partnerships through done for you podcasts. If you have a business, a b2b business and want to build great relationships with clients referral partners and thought leaders in your space. There’s no better way to do it than through podcasts and content marketing. To learn more, go to Rise25.com or email us at support@Rise25.com. Peter Boniface is originally from Sandwich, Massachusetts, where he began learning how to cook and blend flavors from his mother. He started cooking professionally and working in the restaurant business in 1983. Moved to Steamboat Springs, Colorado in 1991, where he worked in various roles in the restaurant and hospitality industry. He saw a need for a quality delicatessen in the Steamboat Springs market and in 1999, with David Pepin, he opened the first Yampa Sandwich Company, and he joins me today. Hey, Peter, thanks for joining me. How are you?
Peter Boniface 1:25
I’m doing great. Thanks. Thanks for having me.
Chad Franzen 1:27
So we were just talking here, I told you that I had your tuna albacore sandwich from the Yampa Sandwich Company for lunch today. And it was quite good. So I highly recommend it. I’m actually thinking about sneaking over there tomorrow. Perfect.
Peter Boniface 1:44
Hey, new offerings, you’d have to try some new LTO is it just launched this past week?
Chad Franzen 1:49
So what do you recommend?
Peter Boniface 1:52
Um, well, we have a short rib, Bahn Mi really delicious with some Asian flavors. And we’re doing a pork carnitas torta as well. So really, warming sandwiches for this fall season?
Chad Franzen 2:08
Great. So, you know, as long as you bring that up, how do you — those are fairly unique sandwiches. How do you kind of come up with that idea? You know, you see the kind of those ingredients like carne dozen tacos and things like that. But how do you come up with those ideas?
Peter Boniface 2:21
Oh, well I do a lot of research, I eat a lot of sandwiches. So I go, and I try and eat all our competitors sandwiches all around, and not just competitors. But, you know, I’ll travel to another metro area besides Denver, you know, go to Seattle, Boston, New York, wherever it’s San Francisco, and have an idea of what’s good. And I’ll sample what’s out there. And then and then you know, the wheels get turning. So it always starts casting a really wide net, and having a number of different ideas. And then and then sort of narrowing it down and narrowing it down as far as where I want to go with it. And it takes quite some time to get to the end point and where I want it to be. So yeah, but it’s a fun process. And that’s my favorite part of the job.
Chad Franzen 3:12
So as I mentioned in when I introduced you there you experienced learning to cook from your mother, how did that kind of influence you?
Peter Boniface 3:24
Oh, it influenced me huge. And without me even realizing it, you know, I had no idea growing up what kind of impact it was going to have on me. But my mother is Italian and so so as my father so growing up in an Italian household, we always we we would sandwich Massachusetts is on Cape Cod and and back at that period of time it was it was very country like which it’s not today, but we would do all the berry picking and making jams and oystering and go fishing and catch you know tons of fish and then my mother would have me clean all the fish and wrap them and pack the freezer for the winter with the fish. So I learned how to you know shark shellfish breakdown, breakdown, fish things, things like that. And then when I got a job as a dishwasher, at a restaurant when I was old enough to work, they realized that I had some kitchen skills and so I got out of the dish pit right away. And all my buddies were stuck there.
Chad Franzen 4:36
So what did you end up doing? When they realized that?
Peter Boniface 4:39
Oh, making sheet pans of bacon wrapped scallops and you know, shucking shellfish? Oysters and doing a lot of prep work for the restaurant was doing you know, classic Yankee cooking which isn’t very interesting, but it was, you know, lots of bread crumbs, butter and lemon, and parsley. And that was basically it, whether it was you know, lobster or cod or you know, blue fish or things like that break, break down the fish, put them in the ceramic boats with with some butter and topping with the bread crumbs, and, you know, have them all prepped up, and then you just take them and drop them in the boiler or broiler and brown the bread crumbs and put it on the plate, big potato, vegetables, lemon, boom, out out the door. So pretty, pretty simple stuff. But it had an impact on me in that way. First, you know, accelerating my professional career, but also me having an understanding of what good simple cooking in flavors were as, as, as a youngster, and so I didn’t have really any desire at that point to, you know, work in the restaurant business or anything for the rest of my life. But what ended up happening was, you know, I used that platform to make money all through high school and college. And so I got to know the business really well through that. And then, you know, going to college, and I got an economics degree. And so I had an understanding of how to run a business and on I think that that’s played a big part in why I’ve been successful. Because I’ve met so many people that go into the restaurant business, they’re like, oh, you know, you’re a great cook, or whatever, you know, you should open a restaurant, but they have no idea how to run a restaurant. And so you know, I think that’s what what gave me my advantage when I when I first went out on my own is that I understood the economics of it and business models and how to make it work beyond beyond the end product putting together a good end product so
Chad Franzen 7:12
So did the fact that you grew up in a town called Sandwich have any influence in what you do today?
Peter Boniface 7:22
The area had had influence on me and what I’m doing today, but no, there wasn’t anything in my head that where I wanted to be in the sandwich business, you know, I came out to Steamboat Springs, to just to be a ski bum and I was like, oh, yeah, you know, I’m gonna go out to Steamboat and ski for a year. And after a year here, then that turned into two. And then, you know, I was working in the restaurant business here. And the places that I worked for, I didn’t have a tremendous amount of respect for the people that I worked for, at the business level. And I just, I saw what they were doing. And I had worked at much higher caliber, better restaurants back in Boston, and on Cape Cod, and I knew that I could run a better restaurant than they were doing at that point in time. And so I kind of was serving the market after my second season here in Steamboat, I just decided, hey, you know, this is a really cool lifestyle and a beautiful place out here. And if I can, if I can give it a go and support a different kind of life for myself, then then I should do that. And I know that I can be competitive here in this in this landscape of restaurants in Steamboat and so I started to you know, break brainstorm and journal and write down ideas that I had had and I decided that nobody knew how to make a good sandwich in Steamboat and and furthermore, at that point in time in Colorado back in the early 90s, I was like there really wasn’t a good salami that I could find in Colorado is like nobody has a good salami here. I was like I need to bring a great salami to Colorado and do that. And so, my business partner that I started, you have a sandwich company with and back then we started it as Backcountry Provisions was what we named it, we designed it to make all of our sandwiches for the rafting guides and the fishing guides and, and so on. And still to this day, we handle pretty much every major guide in town packing their lunches for them to go. So that was the concept of the business. Hey, you know all these people that are going up on the ski mountain and going on a hike and whatnot. Wouldn’t it be great if they had a place that they could go and grab a great sandwich to take out into the backcountry with them And so that’s how it all started. And we were successful right off the bat, you know, it really, it really took off. And I think it took off because of, first off the quality of the product and bringing something into the market that was not currently here. And that there was a, you know, a demand for. And so, I think that was, that was the first thing that people were like, Hey, this is really good food that these guys are putting together. And then second, you know, at that point in time, in Steamboat, there was a mud season or shoulder seasons, and there still is, to this day, but the town has grown so much that, you know, at that point in time, everything would shut down restaurants would just close their doors, and people would leave town for the shoulder season months. And, you know, my business partner and I, we didn’t — first off, didn’t have the money to keep the business going. If we were going to shut it down. We had to, we had to continue to try and, you know, grow the business since we were a new business. So we decided to stay open during the shoulder season, and we really gained a lot of market share, then and that really is what catapulted us to sustainability within our first our first year of business. So yeah, pretty much, you know, try trying to do the best job we could and showing up every day is what?
Chad Franzen 11:28
Yeah, well, that’s, that’s really, that’s really a great story. Thanks. Thanks for sharing that I was gonna ask you kind of how, how the idea came about. So you said you were kind of working in the restaurant industry. You know, you had ideas for starting your own restaurant, you know, you could probably do a better job. What were some other finalists in terms of kind of like niche, you opened the delicatessen more there. But there’s some other ones that you were considering.
Peter Boniface 11:53
Um, well. Italian food is my specialty. I mean, I think I make better pasta than anyone else out there and better pasta and I do sandwiches. But it came down to what can we do that we can afford to open up and open up a large scale dining restaurant was something that was going to be a challenge with our, our economic physician at that point in time. And as well, we were we were tending bar as as our jobs, which is great, you know, ski all day goto the bar at night. But you know, I at that point in time after close to a decade of flooring drinks, you know, both through through college and then after college and into my, my stint here in Steamboat, I was all done with alcohol, I didn’t want to be around people that were partying and that sort of late nights and whatnot. I just was like, that’s not going to be good for me going forward. And, you know, as a family man, it’s certainly been much better for me to not have a restaurant that’s open ‘til late at night. So that was part of the design as well, hey, it’s something that we can operate during the day, and then shut down and not have to not have to operate during dinner.
Chad Franzen 13:23
Yeah, yeah, I could see that. So I have two questions about kind of evolution first. You know, as a Colorado resident, I’m well aware that Steamboat Springs is a very popular place. How has the restaurant market evolved up there during the last 24 years?
Peter Boniface 13:40
Oh, it’s really sophisticated quite a bit. You know, at the time in the early 90s, I’d say the best restaurants were just your classic steak houses here. There wasn’t a whole lot of variety in fine cuisine, and now there’s some very good chefs and very good restaurants in town now. So the landscape has changed quite a bit and of course, you know, the whole craft beer movement that’s gone on in Colorado, has we there’s some very good brewers up here now as well that you know, have the everything from from the brewery with a tap room to full scale restaurant that that brews beer and has pizza ovens and whatnot. And yeah, so there’s some people that do some do some great work here. Yeah, so it’s certainly evolved quite a bit. And I mean, I’m sure I don’t know. Are you a skier? Do you ski at all? Yeah, a little bit. Yeah, well, so when you go into a ski mountain, typically, you know back then you’d go in to get something to eat and it was a bowl of chili or is French fry me that was all there really was to offer and now skier is a full full on Five star restaurants on five star dining on mountain nowadays.
Chad Franzen 15:06
So here’s your restaurant and you have a sandwich company, you mentioned that you even started with a different name and had a kind of a singular purpose. But now it’s evolved in multiple locations. But just in terms of your offerings, how, how has that kind of evolved over time?
Peter Boniface 15:22
Right? Well, so initially, we just opened up and all we were doing were cold cut sandwiches, and cold, cold cut sandwiches, and then we had people coming in to the steamboat location, and they were just like, Oh, hey, can I get that hot? Can I get that hot. And so we had a convection oven that we were using to roast vegetables and bake cookies and do that sort of thing in the restaurant. And so, we again, at that point in time, we were casting a, somewhat of a narrow net as far as the sandwiches are being called in cold cuts, but then a wider net as far as trying to offer different things, you know, making cheesecakes and things like that and seeing what people really were going to enjoy. And so we linked up with a great producer of cold cuts that was out in California. And it was a family run. Second generation, German style, delicatessen producer and these guys made awesome bologna and liverwurst and roast beef and turkey, just really, they did everything, right, and great sausages and stuff. And so just the connection we made with them, really helped us really get some top quality products in and really elevate what our offering was. And then when people started asking for sandwiches hot, we were like, Okay, well, we need to change how we’re cooking things, because we can’t get the food out fast enough. And so we ended up buying new ovens where we could, you know, toast the sandwiches off much quicker, you know, first we went to those conveyor ovens where you dropped the sandwich in it, toast it up. And then eventually, after a few years of that, we went to a faster technology. Now we use the steady speed ovens that are impingement ovens, and they run on convection, and then a little bit of microwave. And by and large, the whole industry is using, you see them in Starbucks and all over the place. And the big advantage of those is they ramp up that convection at you know, 100 miles an hour, and it can toast a sandwich in a minute, well really, really fast and get it hot. And then and then you can, you know, get obviously your throughput, throughput goes up. And as well then the newest models that we just switched over the entire system with, they’re all connected to WiFi. So when I come up with a new recipe, I can design it, and program the cooking times just right, and then send it out via WiFi. And it goes out there to all the restaurants. So it’s really that’s been quite an evolution. But as far as Dave and I and I have two partners named Dave, Dave Papin, who was my original partner, in 99, he and I went to high school together. And so we had worked together in restaurant kitchens, in high school and college, and we knew we worked well together. So that’s where we partnered up and founded Backcountry Provisions. And then we didn’t have this idea that we were going to be a multi unit concept. But we had a number of people coming through the location and Steve Oh, and they were just like, oh, we wish you there was one of these up in Jackson, Wyoming. This would be great in Jackson, Wyoming, or, oh, we wish you were in Park City. Anyhow, we got a bunch of friends in Jackson, Wyoming, we decided, Hey, let’s go let’s go poke around up in Jackson, Wyoming found a location that looked really good. Went up there, built it out, opened up, boom, same same thing it took off right away and we did really, really well there. And so then, two years after opening that restaurant, we decided, hey, let’s let’s go to Fort Collins and go to a larger market and thinking that it should have been really easy to open up there and Fort Collins with, you know, instead of a town of eight to 10,000 people, you’re going to a town of 80,000 people and we was in 2007 And so we found a great location downtown that was just a wreck. And it was the old cash Laputa rifle works down in town and the owner had passed away and so the store had closed down. And it was, it was sitting vacant. And it was just a total total mess. And we started ripping it apart and found all the old Douglas fir floors and the Tin Ceilings from the original 1900 building there in Fort Collins. And I think we turned it into a really neat, really neat delicatessen restaurant. But for whatever reason that business didn’t, didn’t take off right away, and we were really challenged our first year, we’re just like, Oh, why, why are things not not popping here in Fort Collins? And we felt that a lot of people didn’t get the name or didn’t know what we were — we were getting phone calls, you know, answering the phone, and people were like, Yeah, do you rent snowshoes? Do you do? You know? You know, what’s, what do you they didn’t know what we did. And so we had to change our name, so that people understood what we did. And so we first went to a branding agency in Fort Collins and we changed the name to backer delicatessen. And that worked great. And then, you know, it really helped helped accelerate the business from from that standpoint, changing changing the name and and getting some help from professional marketers, which I was not a professional marketer, I knew how to make food taste good, and service customers and manage a restaurant but I wasn’t a marketer. So, that helped quite a bit. But then the second Dave was, his family had a ski house up here in Steamboat, and then he was he, we were one of his favorite restaurants. And he was in between jobs. He actually didn’t have a job at the time, but he was an analyst for private equity, and a master CPA and he was like, hey, I want to bring this concept to Denver. And Dave, and I were kinda like, ah, we’ll you know, I don’t know, that’s not really what we do. But sure, we’ll, you know, after several meetings with him, and really getting a good feel for him as a person, we felt like, like, hey, he has a lot in his skill set that he can help us out with, and, and he thinks this is a go and in Denver, and he’s put together some really sophisticated models and whatnot, let’s let’s go do it. And we put the business together for him, and opened it up at the 16th and Waze location there in downtown Denver. And you know, that one, boom, took off right away again. And so we were, you know, more sophisticated with our marketing and add the new branding and whatnot. And so, you know, we really, really nailed it with that one. And I remember he was still looking for another analyst job. And so he was hanging around the restaurant as it was evolving, and, you know, super busy people everywhere, and he’s got an apron on, and he’s hustling next to me putting out sandwiches, and he just looks over at me, and he’s like, I’m never going back to a cubicle again. He’s like, this is it, this is this is what we’re gonna do was like, alright, let’s, let’s do it. So, you know, he was kind of the one that was just like, hey, it’s all in the multiples. Like, if we, you know, we have something here, you guys, you guys have really done a good job with the product. And obviously there’s a strong demand for it. And so let’s, let’s, let’s take it to the next level.
Chad Franzen 23:43
So you kind of started out a little bit slow in Fort Collins that even resulted in changing the name. But now you have two locations up here, obviously, something happened.
Peter Boniface 23:51
Right, right. Well, you know, I think I’m offering great customer service. And an honest product is something that people miss the mark on and and as well, you know, we really try and, and, you know, in this day and age, there’s so few customer touches, I think people are craving customer touches, especially post post pandemic, people enjoy interaction with humans. And you know, we as a business now have all the online ordering and technology that eliminates human interaction, which is you know, great for your labor cost and whatever but at the end of the day, people like to go into a restaurant where they’re recognized and and you know them and you have credibility, and they trust you and they know that you’re going to do a good job for them, you know, and so, I think that that was a big part of what really, you know, just just like I said, consistency, reliability and credibility with with the product is something that really, really come through. And, you know, that’s hard to do with an elevated product that you have a lot of people involved in the end product, it goes through a lot of steps to get there to the plate, even though it’s just a sandwich, it really, it’s, it’s a lot of hands touch it. So you have to really have good training and trust your people. And as well let your customers know that if there is a problem, just just let us know, and we’ll fix it, you know, we’ll make it right, we want to make sure that you’re satisfied. And that’s our responsibility to our customers is to make sure that they do have a good experience, you know, and, and that they appreciate what we’re serving them. So that part is really simple. Just just do a good job and be as honest as you can and really stand behind your product.
Chad Franzen 25:52
So yeah, sounds great. I have one more question for you. But first, tell me how people can find out more about the Yampa Sandwich Company. I know you have any of two locations on the way right?
Peter Boniface 26:03
We do we have two locations on the way they should open in the next month or so you can find out more about Yeah, but sandwich company at yampasandwichcompany.com
Chad Franzen 26:15
Okay, awesome. Perfect. Yeah. So, last question for you. When you go to your restaurant as a customer, do you have kind of a go-to combination of items or a go to item of choice?
Peter Boniface 26:27
Do I personally have to cut Yeah. I go all over the place because that’s my job. And I do like a lot of variety. But some of the things that I think that we do very well. We have this one sandwich the ridge line, which is by far our number one seller, and it’s essentially our slant on a club sandwich. And it’s excellent I’m not gonna lie, it’s great. But you know, hey, it’s what everybody recognizes and they feel comfortable with that and so they gravitate towards it but our Cuban sandwich is absolutely fantastic. Our Italian cold cut sandwiches are grand that are dolomite are great. They’re as good as anyone’s are hot Italian beef. Cut it out. Off the wall. We also do a roasted eggplant sandwich, which is excellent as well. And we have some great salads. So awesome. I think I probably left a few out of that. But those are some of the Go twos that I like, you know, I think our Cuban is great. I recently went to Miami, the Cuban sandwich is down there. And I think that ours is better. So that’s
Chad Franzen 27:38
I can vouch for the White Albacore. That’s fantastic as well.
Peter Boniface 27:39
Okay. All right.
Chad Franzen 27:43
Hey, Peter, it has been great to talk to you. Thanks so much for all your time and sharing your great stories with us.
Peter Boniface 27:47
Oh, yeah. You’re welcome. Thanks for having me. Appreciate it.
Chad Franzen 27:50
Thank you. So long, everybody.