Twisted Ranch is opening a second location in St. Louis this summer.
The popular ranch dressing-themed eatery will soon have an outpost in Tropical Liqueurs at 4104 Manchester Ave., in The Grove. The new location will include counter-style, take-away service and menu items that compliment Tropical Liqueurs’ frozen cocktails.
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Twisted Ranch is still working on a menu, but guests will see favorites from the Soulard restaurant alongside new flavors and menu items exclusive to the Tropical Liqueurs location, Twisted Ranch co-founder and owner Jim Hayden told SLM.
“We’ve known the group at Tropical Liqueurs for a while and we like what they stand for, so when they approached us, we thought it was a good opportunity to expand,” Hayden says. “It’s an interesting model in an up-and-coming area, so it’s a good test market for us.”
The food window in Tropical Liqueurs (lovingly referred to across Missouri as “Trops”) was once operated by Guerrilla Street Food, but the Filipino fast-casual joint quietly pulled the plug on the partnership in November 2018.
“It ended up not being a good fit so we thought it would be better if we moved on,” Guerrilla Street Food owner Brian Hardesty told SLM. “We didn’t make a big splash about closing it down. We just let it end.”
A new location comes a few months after Twisted Ranch rolled out a line of its signature ranch dressings. In March, Hayden and co-owner Chad Allen started selling five of their most popular dressings such as Cheesy Bacon and Parmesan Peppercorn nationwide at grocers including Kroger, Safeway, and Schnucks. Hayden and Allen partnered with food giant Kraft Heinz to produce and distribute the dressings.
Twisted Ranch is currently testing new flavors for sales at grocery stores with plans to launch additional ranch dressings in 2020, Hayden says.
Twisted Ranch offers more than 30 flavors of ranch dressing at its brick-and-mortar location in Soulard. The restaurant’s opening in 2015 was heralded as “the most St. Louis move ever,” by national food publication Eater. Despite this somewhat inauspicious beginning, Twisted Ranch has made a name for itself in town and nationally over the years, capitalizing on Americans’ undying love for ranch dressing.
“Rolling out the dressings took us down a different path for the last year,” Hayden told SLM earlier this year. “Now the focus will be on opening a unit with a different demographic, to further test the waters,” before exploring the franchise route, he said.
