You may see some new faces at the Lennox Pizza Ranch, and there’s a good chance they might be one of the owner’s family. Michael Tolliver and his wife Karen recently purchased the Pizza Ranch and Michael says it’s very much a family business. He and his wife have five children. He said, “Even my three-year old says she works here.”
For Michael, Lennox is home. He said, “Basically since I was three it’s been my hometown. In the back of my mind, I thought if the Pizza Ranch came for sale — that would be fun.”
What led to this recent transaction was years of management in the restaurant industry. After graduation from Lennox High School in 1993, he owned a construction company. He said once he needed health insurance he took a part time position at Starbucks. Starbucks offered health insurance to part-time employees. From there he went to the Dairy Queen in Sioux Falls as general manager. This position and the people that he met led to a management position at a Pizza Ranch in Wisconsin, and from that position to the Sibley, Iowa Pizza Ranch and from there another stint at Dairy Queen.
He said he knew former Lennox Pizza Ranch owner Schuyler Noteboom and that led to discussions about the sale of the restaurant. He said, “I looked at the numbers and they made sense. I knew I could do it.”
So the Tollivers became owners just after the first of the year.
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