Floral shop leases space on Sprague

Peters & Sons Flowers, which claims  on its website to be Spokane’s oldest flower shop, has moved to a new site at 314 E. Sprague, the former home of Cassano’s Italian Grocery, says owner Susan Matteson. The store completed the move on Jan. 11, she says. 

Previously, Peters & Sons was located in a leased space at 512 E. Pacific, also east of downtown. The new leased space has about 2,000 square feet of floor space, the same square footage as the former location, Matteson says. 

She says the florist decided to move because its former space was being sold. 

“The building we were in, we were only in a portion of the building, and they had some people interested in the whole building,” she says. “So we had to move. But we love our new location. It is much more visible.”

The company built a walk-in cooler for cold storage of the flowers. Other than that, the space was already well-suited for the business, she says. 

Peters & Sons sells flowers, flower accessories, and does deliveries as well. Peters & Sons originally opened in 1905, she says, and she and her husband, Ray, have owned it since 1992. 

Matteson says the business usually has only two employees, but it can vary depending on the season. 

—Katie Ross

Burger grill to open on lower South Hill

Jeff Nordvall and partner Laura Paisley plan to open a burger and beer restaurant near the South Perry District that will be inspired by Midwest specialty hamburger grills.

The restaurant, to be named Wisconsinburger, will be located in a two-floor, 5,300-square-foot building at the southwest corner of Ninth Avenue and Hatch Street, Nordvall says.

He says he hopes to open Wisconsinburger in March, and the restaurant will have about 10 employees.

The restaurant will bring the butter burger, a Wisconsin favorite, to the Spokane area, he says. Burgers prices will range from about $5 to $8.50, he says. Nordvall says burgers will be ground fresh daily from locally sourced, organic, grass-fed beef.

Besides a selection of hamburgers and beer, the Wisconsinburger menu will include veggie and vegan burgers, bratwursts, and fried cheese curds, he says.

In warmer months, Wisconsinburger also will serve frozen custard, Nordvall says.

Nordvall and Paisley, who both hale from the Midwest, are former owners of the Lantern Tavern, at 1004 S. Perry, which they sold in 2012, and now is named Lantern Tap House.

 

—Mike McLean

Barters Closet buys another local startup

Barters Closet LLC, a Spokane-based social ecommerce platform for buying, selling, donating, and bartering clothes, has acquired Dresser App, an upcoming mobile software application developed here for organizing closets. 

Barters Closet co-founder Conner Simpson says the app is expected to launch in June. 

Dresser App will be changing its name to Barters Closet Dresser. The Dresser App team will be working with Barters Closet in the company’s office at 3 W. Third in downtown Spokane, Simpson says. The acquisition brings the number of Barters Closet employees to nine, Simpson says.

Simpson says Barters Closet now not only owns the Dresser App idea, but also hired all the people who were involved with the app as well. 

Dresser App was originally intended to keep track of the items in a user’s closet and give a user suggestions on what to wear based on weather, the occasion, and other factors, Simpson says. 

He says that the initial phase of the app will be just for an individual’s closet, but eventually the combined app will offer more of Barters Closets’ services. The full app will connect users with one another and their closets, and offer ecommerce services.

“It’ll be more of a person-to-person thing,” Simpson says. 

Simpson and Barters Closet co-founder Philip Glenn met the Dresser App team of Tim Aton, Malachi Riedl, Max Delsid, and Chris Mirabzadeh at the most recent Startup Weekend Spokane. 

Simpson says Barters Closet made the decision to buy Dresser App for a few reasons, including not having an app already. 

“For one, we thought it was kind of an absence in our industry; we didn’t have an app,” Simpson says. “And then the team itself too, we like that young vision.”

 

—Katie Ross

Couple here buys South Perry Pizza

John Siok and his wife Paula have bought the assets of South Perry Pizza Co. from a mother-daughter team, Sue and Krista Kautzman.

The new owners don’t plan to make any changes at the eatery, says John Siok, who adds that he knows the Kautzmans as a longtime friend and cycling companion of Pat Kautzman, Sue’s husband.

Siok declines to disclose financial terms of the transaction, which they completed Jan. 1. South Perry Pizza, located in 2,200-square-feet of space at 1011 S Perry, opened in December 2009.

“It never went to the market,” says Siok, who previously worked in pharmaceutical sales. “It was a transaction between us.”

Siok says the Kautzmans had wanted to sell the business to someone who would operate it in the same fashion they did, and they approached him. He currently works full time at the restaurant as general manager, and he says the eatery employs 19 people, mostly part time. 

Siok says his wife mainly works full time at her Spokane photography business, Photography by Paula.

“I have ideas for some special pizzas, and perhaps mix up the beer and wine offerings a bit, but the nuts and bolts of the business will remain what it is,” he says.

 

—Treva Lind