Bryce Rademan is no stranger to hard work. Growing up in Park City the son of influential local leader Myles Rademan, he started working in the hospitality industry at 13 years old, virtually starting his own working tour of the then-quiet mountain town. “My first job was when I was 13 years old at a place called the Taco Maker, which I think is Alberto’s now,” Rademan said. “I then worked my way up through every kind of job in Park City: worked at Windy Ridge, worked at the Grappa, I was in front of house, back of house. I worked at The Chateau lodge up in Deer Valley. I was a lift operator. I worked at the driving range at the Park City Golf Course. I drove a bus for tourists of Deer Valley. So I pretty much saw every angle of hospitality that there was to see.”But when he went off to Occidental College in Los Angeles, he began pursuing a different career path, studying diplomacy, world affairs and Spanish. Those majors sent him to Spain for a semester abroad.It was there that he discovered the Turkish doner kebab, which means rotating meat, sold at food stands all throughout Europe. Similar to the Greek gyro or the Lebanese shawarma, Rademan said he fell in love with this style of cooking meat on a spit and the Mediterranean flavors, and he thought it was missing back home in the U.S.“(I thought), what if I created a concept that married the speed and convenience and price of fast food with the upscale qualities I found working in Park City upscale locations with the ambiance, the customer service, the food quality,” he said. “That’s where the concept started percolating in my head.”So when he came back to finish school, he put together a business plan and, by his senior year, had convinced his best friend Robert Wicklund to sign on to the idea together: a restaurant they would call Spitz Mediterranean Street Food. “Two weeks after we graduated from college, we leased our first location in L.A. We were 21 years old and had to learn how to build out a restaurant in a big city, which was quite a slap in the face from going to a liberal arts college where you are kind of starry-eyed and think everything is hunky-dory all the time,” he said with a laugh. The two quickly came down to reality, he said, eyes opened to the never-ending work of running a restaurant.“It was a small store, and we basically did everything. We prepped, we cooked, we ran the register, we cleaned,” Rademan remembers. “There was a lot of days of 16-hour shifts. Thank God I was young, to be honest. I was young and dumb in the perfect way, we had unbridled optimism. … There was just no way to fail because we were going to do this, and we believed in what we were doing, in the product, and we had the energy to keep it going.”The blend of fast food and sit-down restaurants, which would become well-known today as “quick service,” was uncommon when the first shop opened in L.A. in 2006, Rademan said. They designed a menu that would blend the traditional Mediterranean wraps, in Europe especially enjoyed after a night at the bars, with an even lighter, fresher, healthier focus. And the response was great.Two years later, they opened their second location in L.A., expanded the menu and introduced a full bar. But another set of challenges came along.“That opened in November 2008, which was literally the month that the Great Recession hit, and we were downtown Los Angeles. So that was the scariest part for us. That was really the ‘do or die,’” Rademan said. “We had to get out there, pound the pavement, get our food in front of anyone, anyhow. We added things like trivia, we added a DJ. We added all-day happy hour on the weekends. We expanded the menu in different ways, and it worked. We made it.”Since then, they continued to grow, opening more shops in L.A. until friends here in Utah reached out about opening a location in downtown Salt Lake City. The plan was always to grow, Rademan said, open more locations across the nation just like there were doner kebab stands all around Europe. The franchise model seemed like the best fit because he saw that local ownership was key to success.“Restaurants are a long-term play. You need to be part of the community. You need to have someone that is plugged in, that knows people, that people are like, ‘Yeah, I know the owner,’ or, ‘Yeah, they donated for this or that.’ It just doesn’t work any other way,” Rademan said.But the word franchise or chain doesn’t quite capture what Spitz is all about, he said.“The connotation is a cookie cutter, soulless corporate thing, which has never been what we’ve wanted to do and still is not,” Rademan said. “We kind of coined our own word, which is ‘fam-chise,’ which is pretty corny, but it really is kind of the family-friend model and the vibe.”Finding friend or family connections who want to get involved in the business in their local area means the shops spread organically through Utah.Brett Chamberlain joined the Spitz family when opening the Cottonwood location along with his dad in 2017. When it was clear the shop was a growing success, he quit his banking job and opened two more locations solo, in Draper and then Lehi.Earlier this summer, he saw a location open in Kimball Junction across from the Whole Foods and approached Rademan about the opportunity.After years of searching for the perfect location, Spitz finally opened at Kimball Junction. Credit: Jonathan Herrera/Park Record“I thought, ‘My God, that’s that’s the one we’ve been waiting for,’ because we’ve been looking for a long time in Park City, but just couldn’t find the right one,” Rademan said. “I wanted one with a big patio. I love the corner units. … Being right there next to Whole Foods, which is a great draw for our customer base, everything about that spot just worked.”They signed the lease, and six weeks later they opened on Aug. 23, their 24th location and fastest open yet.The space transformed into what’s become an iconic Spitz look: bright, neon color, street and pop art, a mix of patterns and textures, all specifically chosen to make each location unique. “My designer, who was a local street artist, we met outside the first location (in L.A.),” said Rademan. “He’s now a full partner, his name is Devon Paulson, and he helps hand design and hand paint and hand graffiti every single location, so every location has the vibe of a Spitz.”In Park City? A spray-painted image of a mountain biker fills one wall, black-and-white pictures of historic Treasure Mountain lift and skiers cover other areas, a custom neon sign shows a mountain and the outline of Park City’s Main Street, and in the corner by the drinks, old copies of The Park Record newspapers collage into wallpaper. There’s plenty more easter eggs that locals will find because they are really who the shop is for, Chamberlain said.“Park City in general is a very tight, niche group. I think if you can operate a restaurant that offers a good product and operate it efficiently, I think you’re going to have a lot of locals that continue to come back,” he said. “But, you can crash and burn by it if it’s not, just because there’s a set group of people, and if you burn too many people, then they’re not going to want your food anymore.”Chamberlain said he believes in the product, and after years of running other locations in Utah, feels confident the Park City community will embrace what they’re doing.Their menu is designed to accommodate basically any dietary restriction, with customizable favorites: their street cart fries, like loaded nachos but made with regular or sweet potato fries, with toppings like garlic aioli and feta; a gyro filled with items like a choice of meat, tzatziki sauce and french fries; a medi bowl, which includes a choice of protein, tahini and dill quinoa, hummus, crispy garbanzos and za’atar.The food is as vibrantly colored as the interior — pink pickled onions, pops of green from cilantro or diced peppers, bright-yellow pepperoncini and turmeric rice. And the Park City location is the first hop in Utah to get their new slushies on the menu, piña colada or watermelon mint flavors.It’s been a long two decades in the making, but Rademan and his business have found their way back to Park City, a true full-circle moment. Learn more and order online on their website, spitz-restaurant.com, or on their app, where purchases can earn rewards. The shop is open daily 11 a.m. to 9 p.m.The post Spitz’ new location in Kimball Junction a homecoming for founder Bryce Rademan appeared first on Park Record.