After Boise-area closures, chain to return with new restaurant to ‘be proud of’
When Dickey’s Barbecue Pit shuttered more than 80 restaurants in what it described as an industrywide “wave of contraction” in 2024, the Treasure Valley suffered a direct hit. Four struggling Dickey’s went dark — in Eagle, Nampa, Garden City and Meridian — leaving a lone location in Star.
Now Dickey’s is bouncing back.
Taking over a prominent Boise restaurant building, an experienced operator plans to reintroduce Dickey’s slow-smoked meats to the City of Trees.
A new Dickey’s Barbecue Pit will open soon at 6565 W. Fairview Ave., franchisee Ben Wynkoop said. The target date? Sometime around the beginning of March, if all goes according to plan. The 3,362-square-foot building is the former home of Matty G’s Steakburgers & Lobsta’ Rolls, which closed last July, and before that, Meltz Extreme Grilled Cheese.
Wynkoop, an area developer for Dickey’s and a franchise owner of two Montana locations, said he sees an opportunity to give the nation’s largest barbecue chain a jump-start in Boise.
“My plan was to find a good location to try to put a brand-new Dickey’s in that we would be proud of as far as the name,” he said. “And we’re going to hopefully kind of make it our flagship in the Boise area for Dickey’s.”
The restaurant universe is filled with well-intentioned failures. “There’s a lot more to running a business than simply loving barbecue,” Wynkoop said. But in this particular scenario, he doesn’t see the challenge as rocket science, either.
“We need a good, clean, well-run establishment that fits well with the brand,” Wynkoop said.
The idea is to reaffirm Dickey’s identity in Boise by providing consistent, quality food and service, he said. Plus, the Fairview restaurant will emphasize catering and online ordering.
“We’ll be simple, straightforward barbecue with value at all different areas,” he said. “If (customers) want value from low price, they can get it. If they want value from a quantity standpoint, they get that as well.
“All of our meats are smoked on site. The only thing that comes in precooked is sausage, which is pretty typical. Our brisket comes in the same as a butcher would get it, untrimmed. We trim it, we season it, marinate it, all of that. And we slow-smoke it in-house. We do all of that here.”
Dickey’s still operates hundreds of restaurants nationwide and says it is growing again. Besides the Star location, which is still going strong, Idaho’s only other Dickey’s are in Coeur d’Alene and Post Falls.
Although two prior restaurants didn’t survive for long in the Fairview building, Wynkoop thinks the Dickey’s concept will fit right in, he said.
“This building, I think it’s going to be really well-suited because we can reach pretty much everywhere in Boise plus parts of Meridian and Eagle, as far as catering goes,” he said.
“But from a local, really fitting in (perspective), I think that Fairview will have a lot of blue-collar, a lot of tradesmen. We resonate so well with people that are in trades. I see them at our other locations. I feel that Fairview is a great location for that.”