Scooter’s to add West 12th Street location
Use West 12th Street for your commute? You’ll be getting a new coffee option.
Scooter’s Coffee plans to open a new drive-thru location on a vacant lot at the corner of West 12th Street and Holly Avenue.
It will be similar to the coffee chain’s other drive-through kiosks around the city.
The owners are Travis and Kristen Rhoades, who own six of the seven Scooter’s in Sioux Falls, as well as one in Brandon and a new location that opened recently in Madison.
Scooter’s had been looking for the right opportunity on West 12th Street for several years.
“Twelfth Street is a monster street. It’s really busy, not just the morning commute but all day long,” Travis Rhoades said.
“We’re hoping to catch some new Scooter’s customers heading downtown who perhaps don’t have an opportunity to drive by a Scooter’s on their morning commute, and we think it’s advantageous to be just a few blocks north of the Sanford campus.”
The stretch of road has some of the highest counts in the city, with a range of 20,000 to 40,000 vehicles per day on various stretches.
“It’s a very viable retail and restaurant corridor,” , said Ryan Tysdal of VanBuskirk Cos., who represents Scooter’s Coffee. “West 12th is the main commuter route into Downtown Sioux Falls from the west half of the city.”
The coffee drive-thru will be connected to another tenant space in the two-tenant retail center. The additional space in the retail center is 1,251 square feet, with a pick-up window.
“It’s an ideal location for a pizza delivery or carryout tenant,” said Tysdal, who has the space listed for lease. “We paired Scooter’s with Pizza Hut at 41st and Sertoma a couple years ago, and that has proven to be ideal co-tenancy, since the peak hours for coffee and pizza are at opposite times of the day.”
This is the first Scooter’s drive-thru only location that’s attached to another tenant space.
“The site is not very big, so we had to get creative to make this opportunity work,” Tysdal added.
The small size is effective for Scooter’s, though, Rhoades said.
“I think early on when we built the first one about seven years ago there was some apprehension about the perceived quality, because it’s just this little building,” he said.
“And we’ve seen really strong and positive growth pretty much every year since we’ve opened, and customers have trusted we will deliver a good product with great speed of service. We really stick to amazing drinks and amazing staff, and it seems like each time we open a new store we see regular customers, which helps build the brand throughout the city.”
Construction on the new retail center is planned to break ground this summer, with Scooter’s opening early next year.
Scooter’s doesn’t rule out additional Sioux Falls locations, Rhoades said.
“We’re still scouting. We don’t have anything else in the works, but we understand northwest Sioux Falls is an area people always ask about so that’s on the radar but nothing close to official there.”
