BY CAYDEN SANDERS
Located on the corner of 27th and Hall street, Little Dinero is a new pizzeria in Hays looking to cater to the West side of town. Owner Jacob Proffitt is a local small business owner looking at growing Hays by having small and local businesses in the Hays Community.
Proffitt is from Russell, Kan., just thirty minutes from Hays. After coming to Hays, Profitt started working for the Auman Company. Once he moved to owner-operator of the Auman Company, Proffitt looked to have more businesses as he owns Gari’s Donut & Shanda’s Sweets, Bricks Rockin’ BBQ, Taco Grande and its chain in Russell, Tigers Burgers, is Co-owner of Munsch Fitness, and owner of Team Prophecy MMA.
“For me, it’s not about putting my name on the businesses because this isn’t about me, and I try not to make it about me,” Profitt said. “I want this to be a Hays thing, a group of businesses that helps continue to grow the community and get Hays where we want to be.”
For Proffitt, opening Little Dinero is another way of supporting the community he loves and is rooted in. His main goal is to build the Hays community up from within. As in recent years, Hays has wanted to grow, and Proffitt’s vision is to have local business owners have a stake in this growth of Hays as he believes local people support local businesses.
“If I have a building that is going to sell, I try to find people rooted in Hays. I have a business partner buying a house in Hays, whose son is in Hays, and his family lives in Hays. I find that working with others to bring businesses into Hays with people from the area is the way to go if we want to grow,” Profitt said.
Proffitt feels bringing more chain corporations will not grow Hays as the money will go out of Hays. The only way money says in Hays is it goes to the employees, which is why he is so focused on locally-owned small businesses.
“People think that having all these block restaurants in town will be great for us, but ultimately the appeal will come from the travelers,” Proffitt said. “In the end, the chain would need to have a local franchise to keep more money in town, but in the end, it still would not grow the city of Hays like everyone thinks it will.”
Proffitt wants to be original with the new pizza shop in Hays. He wants it to be a homemade pizza restaurant that serves good food for a decent price for honest people because Proffitt feels that he’s an average man, and if you can’t reach him as a customer, you won’t have a big customer base.
“We plan on making a really good product; we will try and keep it the price point cheaper than other cheap pizza places in town,” Proffitt said. “We know that we will have hardworking customers come into our store that lives on a budget, and we want to cater to them as well.”
Before having the idea of having a pizza restaurant on that side of town, he recounted times when he would get calls from his wife about getting something to eat, and he didn’t want to go through Vine Street to get food.
“I would get off work, and I would be heading home, and my wife would call and ask me to pick something up for supper, and I would be about to the little Dillon’s [Hall & 27th], and I just did not want to deal with traffic at that point,” Proffitt said.
With having a small business, only everything is sunshine and rainbows. Proffitt has seen the downfalls of having a local business, as he has been experiencing a staffing shortage at his businesses.
“Struggles for sure. It’s been huge as people aren’t working in businesses. I want to open up more ideas to the community, but we are struggling to find people that want a job or looking for a job,” Profitt said.
With only a couple of weeks left until the opening of Little Dinero on November 16th, the business looks to be attracting people with a deal of two 15-inch large pizzas, breadsticks and a two-liter of pop for about $22.
But the Little Dinero pizzeria is not the last thing that Proffitt wants to bring to Hays, as his next business adventure will be to bring something kid-friendly to Hays as he wants that to be the next business venture he pursues.