New pizza chain set to open in mid-August; barbecue chain closes its lone Lawrence location

I’m confident there is going to be a turnaround this season in the fortunes of KU football. Why? No, it is not the new offensive coordinator. No, it is not better players. It will be something much more fundamental than that: tater tot pizza. All of it you could ever hope to eat will be in a new restaurant just across the street from Memorial Stadium.

I had reported earlier that the chain Toppers Pizza had signed a deal to locate in the HERE apartment building just east of Memorial Stadium. But I was a little shy on details. Now, I have heard from the owner of the restaurant.

Sally Milligan holds the franchise rights for Toppers in the Kansas City metro area. She currently has a Toppers in Mission, and she is jumping at the chance to open in Lawrence, especially when a spot became available in the huge, new apartment building at 11th and Mississippi streets.

“You are on campus, you are right across from the stadium, and you have like 600 apartments above you,” she said. “It was a no-brainer.”

Plus, Toppers traditionally does well in college markets. Milligan said the late hours — most stores are open until 3 a.m — appeal to college students, but so too do its trendy offerings. Or some may call them unusual or adventurous. At the the top of the list may be a creation called the Loaded Tot-Zza. It is a pizza topped with tater tots, mozzarella cheese, bacon, ranch sauce, green onions and drizzles of nacho cheese sauce. It will be great for a tailgate, or put it in the locker room of the opposing team just before kickoff.

Milligan said the restaurant will be open by football season. She said all the equipment and flooring for the restaurant has been installed. She said the restaurant would be open by mid-August. The store is going into the HERE building’s middle, ground-floor retail space along Mississippi Street.

As for other details about Toppers, it is a Wisconsin-based chain, and it makes a big deal out of using Wisconsin cheese for all of its pizzas. The restaurant — which focuses on delivery and carryout — gives diners three crusts to choose from and all the traditional pizza toppings, plus several others. Those include a buffalo mac ‘n’ cheese pizza, a taco pizza, a Maui pizza, a bacon cheeseburger pizza and a smoky barbecue chicken pizza.

The restaurant also has about 16 dipping sauces for the pizza. They too include the traditional, such as marinara and garlic sauces, bacon honey mustard, salsa and sweet chili, and the full-on unusual including vanilla or chocolate frosting.

In other news and notes from around town:

• While we are speaking of sauce, maybe barbecue sauce and west Lawrence dry cleaning bills just don’t go together. Dickey’s Barbecue Pit near Sixth and Wakarusa has closed.

The landlord for the building told me the owner of the restaurant closed both the Lawrence location and one in Overland Park.

The restaurant is a chain, but it has it roots in a 1940s Dallas barbecue shack that was started by the Dickey’s family. No word on what caused the Lawrence location to not work out. Whatever it was, it wasn’t a lack of free ice cream. In addition to the barbecue — which was a bit unique because the sauce was served warm instead of out of a bottle — the restaurant had free, self-serve ice cream for guests. (Now, I’m starting to feel guilty about the size of some of the cones I ate.)

The landlord, local businessman Greg DiVilbiss, told me he is in some early discussions with other restaurants about taking over the space. He’s also not ruling out another barbecue restaurant, noting that the store still has all of the barbecue equipment in place.