Bear Trap goes bare bones

Since taking back ownership of the Bear Trap Cafe and Bar in Riverside in March 2018, Margaret Weber has often experimented with her menu. When dine-in services for restaurants throughout Wyoming were closed due to concerns over the novel coronavirus (COVID-19), she began providing the option of take-and-bake meals for home delivery. Now that restrictions are beginning to ease across the state and restaurants can provide limited dine-in services, Weber has brought in yet another menu item.

Bare Bones Pizza may have a home at Bear Trap Cafe and Bar, but it is technically the brainchild of Krissy McIrvin.

"I actually have a business plan I wrote up years ago and the name came from there and it was 'Bare Bones Pizza; Just the Best, Stripped Down to the Bare Bones.' So, that's where that came from," said McIrvin.

The introduction of Bare Bones Pizza is not something that happened on a whim or even during the restaurant closures. According to Weber and McIrvin, they first began seriously discussing Bare Bones Pizza eight months ago.

"It was just a matter of when it's going to happen. I think the timeframe was end of summer. By the end of summer we would have had enough money to do this and to buy the equipment," said Weber. "Being shut down and having saved almost enough money to be able to do it all, we just decided to expedite everything. It gave us time to actually do some construction and to not have to have a blip in the business because there already was one."

According to McIrvin, even before the serious discussion about Bare Bones Pizza began, she had believed that something would happen in which she and Weber would work together on a new venture for the restaurant. For McIrvin, pizza is nothing new. In fact, she has quite a bit of experience.

"I hate cooking. I can't cook to save my life but I can make a pizza like no other. This is actually what I did in Ohio before I moved here. I was an owner of a restaurant in Bowling Green, Ohio and it was just pizza and subs and that's what we did. When I turned 18, I started at Papa John's and it must have been 15 years later that I ended up part-owner of the other restaurant," McIrvin said. "When I moved out here, I sold my part and came out here and started working for Margaret. It's just something I've always been good at and I've always enjoyed."

While the introduction of pizza is something both exciting and new for the Bear Trap, it has not come without concerns for both Weber and McIrvin. There are other places in the Valley that offer pizza either as their main menu item or alongside their main menu. Despite that, however, Weber says the reception has been encouraging.

"People have been very receptive and that was something that was a concern. Yeah, there's some other pizza places. Are we flooding the market or can we corner something here? The fact that our ovens are set to cook a pizza in three minutes and 50 seconds; your food is going to come out the same time as your pizza is going to come out," said Weber. "You've got kids that want a cheese pizza, you've got dad that wants a steak. You can get that, it's all going to come out and once and you're not going to be here for four hours."

According to McIrvin, there were so many initial orders that she and Weber had discussed putting in a second phone line. Weber added that they had underestimated the response they would receive and that average sales have been increasing on a weekly basis since the introduction of Bare Bones Pizza.

"We had come up with kind of a break-even point which would cover labor, it would cover all of our costs and it would also cover repayment of the remodel and the pizza ovens. We're currently averaging about double of what that projection was," Weber said.

Due to the regular menu items that the Bear Trap offers, it will allow Bare Bones Pizza to do more than the basic pizza options. The Philly Pizza, for example, uses the same prime rib that is used for the french dip sandwich. Another pizza, the Ragin' Cajun, uses the same ingredients as the Bear Trap's cajun pasta. Other pizzas that have been created recently include a reuben pizza and a thai peanut chicken.

"We have recipes for a huge variety of stuff that's not normally on a pizza or that isn't what you expect to have on a pizza. The loaded baked potato pizza? Sounds kind of weird. It's phenomenal. It's better than potato skins, but kind of the same concept. The chicken caesar pizzeta is something that people around here have never really heard of. It's starting to catch on," said Weber. "If you're not cross utilizing product in a restaurant in a town this size, you will fail. Period."

For McIrvin, who had only been able to do a limited number of pizza toppings in the past, Bare Bones Pizza provided her with a blank 10, 12 or 16 inch canvas to work with.

"This is really exciting for me because I get to make weird stuff, as Margaret says it, everyday and I get to mess around with it and that's not something that I ever got to do before," McIrvin said.