Boise chain opens third restaurant since pandemic began? Expansion is ‘full throttle’

When COVID-19 washed over the restaurant industry in 2020, Paddles Up Poke resurfaced almost instantly.

The Boise chain’s flagship store at 237 W. 9th St. pivoted to takeout. Walk-in numbers soon rebounded as patrons ordered food to-go. And deliveries skyrocketed, helping overall sales jump about 40 percent two months into the pandemic, owner Daniel Landucci says.

As the world settled into a new normal, Landucci kept expanding. While other restaurants shuttered temporarily or even permanently, he opened a new Paddles Up Poke in Nampa in June 2020. He followed it with a Village at Meridian location in January.

Now Paddles Up Poke will launch its fifth Treasure Valley location. After welcoming its first customers at 11 a.m. Nov. 19, the new Caldwell store — at 712 Arthur St. in Indian Creek Plaza — will host a grand opening celebration later in the day.

Starting at 5 p.m., the first 50 patrons will receive a T-shirt. Any adult buying food will get a free can of White Dog Brewing beer. The STIL will hand out free ice cream samples to everyone. A local musician will perform. And Buster Bronco will make an appearance, along with Boise State cheerleaders.

Landucci says that 25 percent of all sales Nov. 19 will be donated to Make-A-Wish Idaho, a nonprofit.

Four years after Paddles Up Poke was founded, it’s clear the formula works. The menu is driven by health-oriented, customizable bowls and burritos. They’re filled with poke (pronounced POH-kay), chunks of marinated, raw fish. Each counter-service meal is prepared as the patron watches.

“Our product is healthy. It’s fast,” explains Landucci, 31, who graduated from Boise State in 2013. “You can see it being made, you can see what it looks like. The thing with fish — you can’t hide anything, right? It’s either fresh, or it’s not fresh.”

Still, the primary reason for the success of Paddles Up Poke? The employees, he says.

“I have to give them full credit. They’re rock stars.”

While many restaurants struggle to hire enough help, Paddles Up retains its staffers — and finds new ones. “From Boise to, now, Caldwell, the majority of our employees are referrals,” Landucci says. “I don’t think we’ve had an employee leave within their first year in about two years now. Most of our employees have been on staff for a year to three years — and it’s pretty incredible in the industry, which does have a high turnover rate.”

This core consistency means Paddles Up Poke can keep growing. In mid-2020, Landucci told the Statesman that he had a five-year goal to open 50 restaurants. That dream hasn’t changed.

“We’re going full throttle,” he says. “We’re hoping to open three to five more next year, then five to 10 the following year.”

Paddles Up Poke will launch a sixth Treasure Valley location when it joins other vendors at The Warehouse Food Hall, which is slated to open in spring 2022 in downtown Boise’s BoDo district.

After that? Maybe two more Idaho expansions before leaning into Utah, Landucci says. “We’re in, kind of, talks with the Salt Lake City area.”

Cruising upstream during a pandemic or not, there’s no stopping Paddles Up Poke, it appears.

“Our growth has just been so awesome,” Landucci says. “We’ve been able to pump it all back into the staff and into the stores. We don’t borrow any money. This is all self-made, self-promoted. Everything’s kind of funneled back into the company. We just keep pumping it back into the company and back into the employees, and that helps, too.”

This story was originally published November 15, 2021 at 4:00 AM.