By Charlie Pogacar
Jon Bortles was nearly 8 years old when he inadvertently changed the course of Woody’s Wood-fired Pizza forever. His father, Bart—who opened and operated Woody’s in Golden, Colorado, starting in 1993—asked a young Jon where he wanted to go for his eighth birthday.
“Beau Jo’s!” Jon told Bart, referring to the legendary Colorado pizza chain credited with creating Colorado Mountain-style pizza (which offers a honey infused crust, with sides of honey offered on the side).
“In hindsight, I could just see his heart breaking,” Jon said recently, chatting with PMQ. “But it was something that was so cool for me as a kid, and very shortly after, [Woody’s] began offering honey to our customers, and it just kind of blew up.”
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It wasn’t nearly the last time Jon Bortles would influence the day-to-day operations at Woody’s. In 2015, he took over the restaurant his father had founded and helped turn into one of Colorado’s best-known pizzerias. The brand has since earned national repute: Last year, Woody’s was named to Yelp’s list of the top 100 pizza spots in the country.
What started in 1993 as a smokey bar that housed a pizza oven to fulfill a technicality—to keep his liquor license—became, over the years, a family-friendly restaurant known for its high-volume pizza buffet. Located just two doors down from the Coors brewery, Woody’s hosts a mix of tourists and locals alike.
“We have maybe 150 seats, and we serve 1,000 people per day,” Jon said. “So you can imagine that if every single person wanted their own pie, or medium-rare burger or whatever, we couldn’t turn tables fast enough to make enough money.”
And while some might associate buffets with cookie-cutter ingredients and cold pizza, that’s not the Woody’s way. All pizzas at Woody’s are made from scratch. Front-of-house team members are taught to take laps and make sure everything on the buffet is fresh and up to par. The pizza chefs take requests, too, from customers who dream up crazy-sounding pizzas. The restaurant also has a standard menu filled with pies and other menu items, but Jon Bortles estimates that about 80 percent of its tickets are dine-in, and about 80 percent of those dine-in tickets are for somebody eating from the buffet.
While Bart Bortles stepped away from the business in 2015, he had been there as a resource for Jon—not to mention his role as a doting grandfather to the two children Jon has with his wife, Kendal. But Bart passed away in December, leaving behind a strong legacy as the man who started it all.
“My dad had very high expectations, there was a lot of tough love,” Jon said. “But, at the same time, he was very, very focused on the next generation and leaving things better than you find them. He instilled a lot of good values in terms of how we bring up the people around us.”
That philosophy is still at the core of everything Woody’s does, which begins with how Jon Bortles treats his staff. The pizzeria pays competitive wages and looks after its team members beyond weekly compensation. For example, when an employee was diagnosed with cancer, Jon and his team organized a fundraiser to help offset some of the medical costs.
“It’s just that personal touch,” Bortles said. “They know that I care about them as human beings, and I want them to be able to pay their bills. So they stick around, because—it’s cliche and everyone says it—but I mean, it is truly a family here.”
These things make a difference: Woody’s has team members who have been around for all 32 years the place has been open. Jon estimates that the average tenure of his servers is around 10 years—no small feat for a pizzeria that has around 100 team members. Not only does this help keep a close, tight-knit team, but it impacts the customer-service experience, too.
“You can go out anywhere and get a bite to eat,” Bortles said. “If you’re on a budget, you can go get fast food or whatever, but you can’t come in and see people that know you, know your kids, have watched them grow up. So that sets us apart: the value and the customer service—it checks all of the boxes, not just one of them.”
While Bart had expanded Woody’s to several locations at one point, Jon and his family’s focus is now on just the one pizzeria in Golden. It’s fitting that it’s the original one—the one that’s become an iconic eatery. The one that started serving honey to fit the now-owners young tastebuds.
“Having the opportunity to keep this in the family,” Jon said. “And keep it for my kids, for them to grow up the same way I had, and to potentially pass it off to them one day. That’s just a huge opportunity that most people don’t get.”
