Today we’d like to introduce you to Nick Swanson.
Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
I started out bussing tables back in 2005 at Bacaro Venetian Taverna on Pearl St in Boulder. I eventually worked my way back in to the kitchen by constantly bugging the chef with different cooking questions each day. Three and a half years later I had worked my way up to sous chef and done a stage over in Italy. I knew after that, cooking was what I wanted to do. I went to culinary school in NYC and ended up working at Perry St, one of Jean Georges Vongerichten’s restaurants that at the time had 1 michelin star. After 3 years in the city my wife (girlfriend at the time) wanted to come back to Colorado and following her back was the smartest decision I ever made! I bounced around a few jobs in Boulder before settling in with the Mountain Sun Group where I met 2 of my current business partners. After 8 years with them, covid hit, and turned the world upside down, especially the restaurant industry. Like any normal person, we thought, why not spend way too much money and open up our own restaurant haha. As they say, the rest is history, and we just celebrated our 3 year anniversary in Longmont, 1 year anniversary in Loveland, and just opened up a third location inside of Peculier Brewing in Windsor. We’ve been pretty fortunate to part of some amazing communities that have supported us since day one. I can speak for our whole team when I say that we are looking forward to what’s next!
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
I think every restauranteur would agree that the restaurant industry is never smooth. You’ll be sitting there thinking you’ve finally hit your stride when a key team member decides to leave or pricing goes through the roof on one of your most popular menu items. The bumps in the road are gonna happen, it’s all about how you handle them and decide to push forward. That’s what makes the drive so much fun.
As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
I’m the chef and co-founder of Urban Field Pizza. We specialize in pizza, specifically our Detroit inspired pizza crust. What separates us from most is the other items we have on our menu like our smash burger and smoked wings. They are both sneaky good and not what you’d expect to get at a pizza place. On top of that, is our incredible hospitality. Our whole front of the house team does an amazing job at making you feel at home the moment you walk through the door. We are just trying to make people’s days a little brighter, one pepperoni at a time.
How do you think about happiness?
Outside of my wife and four amazing kids? The best feeling I get is when you watch someone take a bite of your food for the very first time and you just see their whole face light up with wonder and amazement. We all know they’ve had pizza before but their face says they’ve never had pizza like that before! Drop me into 2 feet of fresh snow on any of the amazing mountains out here and I’m a pretty happy camper as well!
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.urbanfieldpizza.com/
- Instagram: urbanfieldpizza
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/urbanfieldpizza
Image Credits
Nick Swanson (all my personal photos)
