Building the Valley: West Deer’s ‘Round the Corner Carryout moving up the street to new digs under construction

Tony LaRussa | Tuesday, November 16, 2021 8:53 p.m.

Steve and Amy Boop and their son Wesley, 3, are building a new restaurant just up the street from their ’Round the Corner Carryout restaurant in West Deer. The couple is hoping the new building, visible in the background, is ready by spring.

Six years ago, Steve and Amy Boop decided to turn their experience working in restaurants into their own venture: a food truck with gourmet wraps. But another opportunity was knocking, right around the corner.

“We had everything pretty much ready to do that,” said Amy Boop, 35, of the food truck idea. “Then this building came up for rent.”

That building housed ’Round The Corner Carryout pizzeria. It was no longer operating, but the location — at the corner of Saxonburg Boulevard and Bairdford Road in West Deer — was promising. Six months after marrying, the Boops took it over, putting the food truck idea on hold.

And now, six years later, with an established business, the West Deer couple is hoping a new opportunity awaits them just up the street. They are constructing a new building for the restaurant that should be open by spring 2022.

When they took over ’Round the Corner, “We kept the name because it fit,” Boop said. “We’re going to keep it when we move because the new place is just around a different corner.”

“We’ve had such a positive reception from this community,” he said. “So now we’d like to build a nicer place where we can offer more and have a place for people to gather.”

Boop said the business has experienced slow but steady growth since opening six years ago. Then the coronavirus pandemic hit, and they were in a strategic position.

“A lot of places were closing down, but we only do carryout,” he said. “So were were already set up when the shift went to takeout only.”

With no room to expand in their current building, the Boops bought a 5-acre parcel along Saxonburg Boulevard about one-tenth of a mile away to construct a new building.

“We need more room for everything,” Boop said. “We don’t have enough space for food prep, storage or to add any more equipment. We’d also like to be able to have some tables for people who want to dine in.”

The Boops have built a loyal following with mainstays such as traditional and gourmet pizza, hoagies and salads, along with daily specials they manage to produce without the benefit of a proper kitchen. The specials include offerings such as fresh soups, grilled pork chops with a portobello and shallot cream sauce, or fried chicken breast with beer cheese and seasonal squash rice pilaf.

“My background is in bar food, so I’d like to add some things like burgers and a fried chicken sandwich to the menu when we have more room to do that,” Steve Boop said.

The family is hoping work on the new building will be completed by the spring so they can move into the new space, which will have room for indoor and outdoor dining and parking.

Amy Boop said even though they have been getting lots of encouragement from customers, the prospects of taking on a larger building still can be daunting.

“Getting all the permits we needed has taken longer than we expected,” she said. “But things are moving along. There’s progress on construction, so we’re really excited to see things start to come together.”

The shell of the new building is up, and work to install the metal roof has begun.

Mick Abbott, owner of Abbott Construction in Slippery Rock, said some of the wood being used for the roof of the outside dining area is being sourced from the 5-acre site itself.

“We found oak and cherry wood here that we were able to mill into boards,” he said. “This isn’t the kind of wood you can just go out and easily buy. And even if you could, it would be too expensive for most projects.

“So this is something nice we were able to do on this project. I think they’re going to have something to be proud of when this is done.”

Amy Boop looks back on the days when they were starting the business. The location had been a food venue for years — it was the site of a Dineff family eatery for years before becoming ’Round the Corner — which gave them confidence in starting a business there.

“We figured a pizza shop could be a good stepping stone for us,” she said.

She said they love following progress at the new building by simply popping their heads out the front door of the pizza shop. “It’s a little bit of a thrill to see it going up day by day.”