Scooter’s Coffee and Pizza Hut are franchising in Grinnell, and owners of well-established local businesses including Saints Rest Coffee House and Pagliai’s Pizza Grinnell have mixed feelings about these new restaurant chains and impact they may have on Grinnell. A Scooter’s is set to open by Thanksgiving, and a Pizza Hut location will open shortly after the New Year, both on West Street.
While the owners of both Pagliai’s and Saints Rest feel that the new restaurant chains will affect their businesses, they also expressed pride in the standards they have set for their own establishments. Both said they believe their standards will set them apart from the incoming restaurant chains.
“Any new eating option will affect your business in some way. They [Pizza Hut] will be more in the ‘fast food’ type of pizza market. We at Pagliai’s provide a clean, good service, high quality ingredients experience and we know our customers value that,” Joey Pagliai, owner of Pagliai’s Pizza, wrote in an email to The S&B.
“I think that we [Saints Rest] will lose business. I don’t think that’s unfeasible. I also think that there really is nothing I can do about that, outside of focusing on my business and trying to improve my business, so that the customer base I have stays with us,” said Sam Cox, owner of Saints Rest.
Cox added that she feels that Saints Rest and Scooter’s are different in terms of the products that the two shops serve and she takes great pride in the way she runs her shop.
“I’m very particular about the kind of product that I serve … we do everything from scratch, we make all of our stuff in-house … so I’m very proud of our kitchen and what we bring out of it, and I’m also very proud of the fact that our coffee is very fresh. It’s made to order, and we understand the industry … what those drinks should look like, should taste like versus something that’s mass produced. In a nutshell, that’s the difference between myself and Scooter’s,” said Cox.
Joey Pagliai did not express any concern that the new Pizza Hut will impact Pagliai’s Pizza negatively.
Not only do these local businesses feel that there will be minimal impact on their business with the introduction of Scooter’s and Pizza Hut, but they also see some potential benefits these new restaurants may bring.
“The longer I am in downtown [Grinnell], the more that I realize, understand, and cultivate the fact that the more businesses that bring feet into Grinnell and into our downtown area tends to be a positive thing for everyone,” said Cox.
Cox also expressed that these businesses will bring much-needed jobs for people in the community. “While I’m not super excited about a Scooter’s coming into Grinnell, I’m also not unhappy for the opportunities that it will give to some people that need jobs,” said Cox.
Grinnell’s Chamber of Commerce, a membership-based organization whose main role is to promote the City of Grinnell, support Grinnell’s businesses and elevate the interests of its residents, expressed a similar sentiment regarding the new businesses.
“Generally speaking, competition can be a positive thing for businesses. When we have competition, we try to do a little bit more, a little bit better. When visitors come in to the community, they have more choice and that’s a positive thing,” said Rachel Kinnick, president and CEO of the Chamber of Commerce.
In the past, Scooter’s has made two previous attempts to come to Grinnell, which fell through. Cox recalled that Scooter’s initially tried to purchase the Classic Car Wash space next to the Steve Link Ford Lincoln car dealership on West Street.
According to Cox, the owner of the car wash set a high price for that location. Then, within the last four years, Scooter’s attempted to purchase the old Wells Fargo building. At the time, the space was occupied by Lucky Cat, a drive through coffee shop that Cox opened in 2019. The owner of the property decided not to sell it to Scooter’s.
Last year, Scooter’s had some luck when Grinnell College sold the land on the corner of 6th Avenue and West Street to the Scooter’s franchiser. The newly built drive-through coffee shop now sits awaiting its opening sometime in the next couple of weeks.
There are many moving parts to opening a business. The ways in which businesses are approved in Grinnell generally falls on the city of Grinnell, which does not have a general business licensing program.
Tyler Avis, the director for building and planning for the city of Grinnell, described the process for approving potential new businesses in Grinnell.
“Say someone wanted to come to Grinnell and open a Papa John’s, the only formal review process that they would have to go through is the permit review process for the building that they would be either constructing or remodeling. We don’t have a business licensing program where every single business in Grinnell has to pay a fee in order to operate,” he said.
According to Avis, businesses who do not wish to build or remodel do not need to go through any sort of permit review process. “Say there’s a business that the code would consider is a mercantile type of business … Maybe one owner of it is selling clothing … and the next tenant who decides to rent that same particular space decides to sell tires. If they didn’t change anything related to how that space is oriented or how it’s set up, then they wouldn’t need a permit or business license whatsoever,” he said.
Both Pizza Hut and Scooter’s went through permit review processes for their renovation and building ventures, and Avis said the processes were fairly smooth and simple.
The Chamber of Commerce can sometimes serve a supportive role in helping new businesses through the permit review process, but the city of Grinnell is the only entity that can review and approve building permits for potential new businesses.
“If a business came to us [the Chamber of Commerce] and said, ‘Hey we want to open here,’ we would help guide them through that process in terms of like, ‘Do you have a business plan? Do you have funding? Can we help you connect the dots in that way?’ When it comes to the point of permitting and that sort of process, all of that goes through the City of Grinnell,” said Kinnick.
Ultimately, these new restaurant chains are responding to a community desire for more restaurants in Grinnell. According to Kinnick, the need for more restaurants in the community was one of the top issues highlighted in the Build a Better Grinnell survey, an ongoing research project responding to the wishes and goals of Grinnell community members for the sake of improving Grinnell.
The construction and opening of new restaurants helps fulfill that community desire, which to the Chamber of Commerce, is the main objective.
“We don’t get into the business of supporting X over Y. At the end of the day, business is business and business is good,” said Kinnick. “At the end of the day, we do whatever we can to get more people to live in this place, to spend their money in this place, and to support the businesses that we have.”
