On Thursday, June 6th, Ranch Pizza will open its eighth location at 7940 SE Stark Street on Montavilla’s historic main street. That same morning, the pizzeria’s sister business, Loro Coffee, will welcome customers from its second location, which shares this storefront. Ranch Pizza owners intend to make the Stark Street location the home base for their growing organization, using it to develop new ideas for their local restaurant chain.
Over the last seven months, partners Eric Wood and Richard Corey have been in an expansion mode, opening Loro Coffee’s first location inside the new Beaverton Ranch Pizza shop in October 2023. They next completed their Hillsboro pizzeria in April. After a short rest, their team is at it again in Montavilla. All this work makes up for time lost to shutdowns and economic uncertainty. “Beaverton opened after a pretty long pause; it took extra long to build out, and we had some difficulty coming out of the pandemic,” recalled Wood.
Both Ranch locations’ openings this year developed out of two enticing opportunities that happened to occur at the same time. “Hillsboro and this one are both similar in that we were taking over existing restaurant spaces, which from a building build-out standpoint is always a lot easier. The one in Hillsboro happened to already be a pizza restaurant. That was super easy. It was relatively new, so we didn’t feel like it was in our best interest to pour a bunch of money into it if we didn’t have to, [just] for the sake of changing it,” said Wood.
Hillsboro could have been the only location opening in the first half of 2024 if not for Hungry Heart’s decision to consolidate operations to one location in January. “We had our eyes on Montavilla for a while, both myself and my business partner live in the area. It’s kind of a dream to have that home base location as an owner, and we didn’t feel like we have that where we’re at in the southeast,” explained Wood. With the other cafe location across the river in Beaverton, it has been a challenge for the owners to participate in new coffee tastings or coordinate the specials as much as they would like to. That prompted a search for a location in the Montavilla area with an eye on this SE Stark Street building. “I actually spoke to the landlord of this building about the space right next to ours, which is now a really great board game shop,” recalled Wood. However, adding another restaurant was not ideal for the building’s owner. “But when Jax [Hart of Hungry Heart] approached the landlord about selling their business and scaling back, the landlord reached out to us first, and we were very happy they did. So that’s kind of how that all fell into place.”
Wood and Corey met Jax Hart through the restaurant transfer process and will carry Hungry Heart Bakery items through the Loro coffee shop, serving many of Hungry Heart’s classic baked goods. In addition to incorporating some of the previous shop’s menu items, Ranch Pizza’s owners kept the existing kitchen and the entire restaurant’s infrastructure, only swapping out a few pieces of equipment. Past visitors to the space will see the same general layout with a complete refresh of the dining room and front counter area. Over the last few months, crews have replaced the casework and lighting and repainted the customer-facing zone.
The Montavilla Ranch Pizza has a unique design that pulls nostalgic inspiration from the pizzerias of people’s childhoods. “We worked with a great design team that goes by the name Each Other and a fantastic woodworker contractor called Context Woodworking. That team also designed the refresh of Yaowarat‘s place across the street,” explained Wood. This project was the first full Ranch Pizza build-out with this design team. Each Other provided branding concepts for Loro Coffee and interior design consulting for the Beaverton Ranch location. For this project, Wood and Corey gave the designers a chance to develop the project from beginning to end while meeting the company’s need to host two distinct businesses. “The challenging part, I think, is keeping it neutral but allowing it to still be an interesting space combining the vibe from the two different brands. They did a great job with it; we’re happy with how it turned out. I feel like this is definitely the template we want to move forward with,” said Wood.
The new seating area supports around 50 guests inside and 40 people outside. The wide sidewalks in front of the building provides a portion of that dining space, but they also wanted to keep the on-street seating. That space needed updates before Portland officials would grant its continued use. “We had to bring that structure up to code, which were new City codes,” said Wood. Crews rebuilt the covered curbside seating space, keeping the original frame but adding new compliant elements. Extra seating is important for the business but comes at the cost of a few on-street parking spaces. Wood acknowledges parking will be challenging, particularly for food delivery drivers, who comprise 25 to 30% of Ranch’s business. However, Wood and his partner are excited about the City’s new dedicated bike parking in front of their shop and its location on the 70’s Greenway that crosses SE Stark Street on 80th Avenue. Wood looks forward to people visiting the new location by various transportation modes.
Ranch Pizza locations offer the same regular menu items at all locations. Wood explained they like to streamline the food selection on the pizza side. With the chain adding locations, he expects the pizza menu to become fully unified between all locations, even synchronizing the rotating special that, up to now, staff independently selected at each location. “Coordinating the ordering and recipes for eight specials is a lot for our operations person to handle,” remarked Wood. However, Loro has more flexibility. They are considering bringing the breakfast focaccia that Beaverton customers have enjoyed to the Montavilla location at some point. Wood describes it as a breakfast pizza made from the Ranch crust. They have not decided on that and will gauge the local tastes before updating the selection.
Starting on June 6th, Loro Coffee’s menu is available from 7:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. Monday through Friday and 8:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. on weekends. Ranch pizzas are available every day from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. They could extend coffee service hours if they see customer interest. Wood said they will have a simple Grand opening on the first day and “business as usual from there.”
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