Boulder’s Boss Lady Pizza closes after a decade on the Hill

BOULDER — The last slices were slung Saturday at Boss Lady Pizza’s University Hill eatery as the pizza shop closed last week after nearly a decade in businesses. 

The “truth hurts,” the company posted on its Facebook page late last week. “We are closing up shop for the same reason as many other small businesses in Boulder — unsustainable rise in cost of goods [and] repairs, and exorbitant Boulder rents.”

Boss Lady, representatives of which did not immediately respond to requests for comment Monday, was launched on the Hill in 2012 by Whitney Hart when she was 26; Hart worked in a slice shop during college in Wisconsin, according to BLP’s website. 

Part of the BLP’s mission is to provide opportunities for women in the pizza industry, and, according to Hart’s post, the hope is to eventually become fully employee-owned. 

According to Hart’s LinkedIn profile, “After nearly 15 years in the pizza industry, I am transitioning my talents and experience over to franchise consulting with” the Burger King brand at fast-food juggernaut Restaurant Brands International.

BLP’s Superior location, which opened last year in the Rock Creek Village shopping center, remains open. 

“A long–time resident of Superior, she and her wife moved to Carbondale for two years, but Whitney always kept an eye on her old neighborhood for an opportunity to move back,” according to the Superior Chamber of Commerce. “Boss Lady Pizza Superior was born on February 18, 2021 when the location in the Rock Creek Village became available. She seized the opportunity to open a sister restaurant in her favorite town.”

BLP is one of several University Hill eateries to shut down operations in recent months.

Rosenberg’s Bagels & Delicatessen, a popular eatery with locations in Denver’s Five Points neighborhood and in Aurora’s Stanley Marketplace, closed its Boulder outpost last month after only about a year in business. 

Joshua Pollack, owner of Rosenberg’s parent company Bridge & Tunnel Restaurant Group and a University of Colorado graduate, took city leaders to task during a Boulder City Council public comment session last month for what he considers to be deteriorating conditions on the Hill.

“I had high hopes that the Hill would be a place where all members of the community could come, not just college students,” he said. But “vagrant[s]” and “crime” make the neighborhood “an unattractive place for people to travel to.”

Cost of doing business in Boulder was also a concern. Pollack told the Denver Business Journal in June that buildout of the Boulder shop cost $1.8 million, nearly quadruple the cost of the original Five Points shop in 2013.

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