Jake’s Stadium Pizza

Family-owned and -operated restaurants built on broad shoulders, superior locations, and attention to detail.

Photo by Kris Kathmann

Sarge ordered them to march.

He was a rough-and-tumble five-foot-five, joined the Army in ’49, and fought communists in Korea from Pusan to the China border. Think Popeye after spinach. As an Army master sergeant, Vernon “Sarge” Carstensen faced the Red Menace again during two tours of duty in South Vietnam, earning the Bronze Star, Purple Heart, and Silver Star. He was rough, he was real, he was old-school.

He invaded the Mankato restaurant scene in 1972, purchasing Stadium Pizza from a well-respected businessman who simply couldn’t make a go of it. He changed the name immediately to Jake’s Stadium Pizza to reflect the familial ties and influence of his brother-in-law and sister, and to keep the reference to its location on Stadium Road near MSU. And he began running the restaurant his way, as a master sergeant would.

In 1997, Sarge sold his Mankato restaurant to his son-in-law and daughter, Wally and Brenda Boyer, and his St. James restaurant to daughter Diane Halverson. Though no longer actively involved, and though the next generation hasn’t completely followed his old-school style, Sarge Carstensen’s pepperoni-like footprints can still be seen on nearly every pizza ordered.

Since 1997, the media face of Jake’s Stadium Pizza in Mankato and Jake’s Pizza in St. James has been the buoyant 53-year-old Wally Boyer. In 1974 he married Sarge’s daughter Brenda, who now works at Carlson Craft as a graphic designer and off-hours designs many of the restaurant’s menus and promotional pieces. Wally and Brenda both worked at Jake’s Stadium Pizza from early on in its history. As for Diane, she did too before taking on managing the St. James location in 1978 at age 21, after Sarge had purchased it from his sister Rose Jacobson.

For decades now the Mankato restaurant has been linked to sports, specifically the Minnesota Vikings, and more recently, Mankato West High School.

Around the table the three reminisced, Wally, Brenda, and Diane, excitedly stumbling over each other’s words, sharing the best stories of their past, and ultimately, the best dreams of a shared future. (By then Sarge had departed, leaving the younger generation to the writer.) In many ways, the three “grew up” as people at Jake’s Stadium Pizza in the 1970s.

“We have wonderful memories of the Vikings coming in here when we were teenagers,” began Brenda, referring to herself and sister Diane in the early years. “Page, Eller and Marshall would sit at that table over there and drink ‘adult beverages’ right from the pitchers. When they were done the table would be full of empty pitchers and mugs.”

Added Wally, “At one time you could walk in here and there would be 25 Vikings inside. This began happening right from the beginning in 1972 because there was no other restaurant around that was near the Vikings Training Camp.”

Brenda nudged back in: “But we had to keep their presence here pretty hush-hush because they didn’t like to be bothered. They came here for the privacy to get out of the limelight….”

“….that and the fact that Sarge always had frosted pitchers and beer mugs,” said Wally, finishing his wife’s sentence. “The mugs weren’t chilled; they were frosted. Sarge put them in the freezer and would throw them up when the Vikings came in. The mugs and pitchers were nice and cold, and the players liked that.”

Brenda paused and scratched her temple as if digging out another memory. “I remember that the veteran Vikings for the longest time never would accept the rookies. The rookies would have to sit in a different part of the restaurant, in their own area. But one year the veterans finally accepted one. And you could tell by their acceptance that this rookie was going to make a difference on the team. He was Chuck Foreman.”

More than anything, Wally, Brenda, and Diane said they learned a solid work ethic and business sense from their father. Sarge had an army marksman’s eye for detail and was always looking for ways to hit profit targets. “For instance,” began Diane, “he would send people home if business was slowing in the evening, in order to cut back on labor dollars.”

He also believed that if his restaurants didn’t fudge on quality, the product would sell itself. The mozzarella cheese used today contains about two percent butterfat, which is half the butterfat employed at many pizza restaurants. Higher butterfat leads to a greasy pizza, Wally claimed.

Sarge also taught them the importance of “selling the sizzle” instead of the steak, meaning that visual presentation was just as important as product quality.

Brenda learned that a direct correlation existed between earning money and enjoying certain aspects of life. For instance, she and her cousin were able to visit Disney World soon after it opened in Florida because she had earned enough money working at Jake’s. Long hours and the faithful participation of family members, such as wife Norma, were Sarge’s keys to success, she said.

Wally said, “Sarge’s belief is that if you account for everything, keeping close track of the money, you will be successful in the restaurant business. You watch how you spend money and you document everything. When his family would come for a visit to Jake’s, and he’d treat them, he wouldn’t take the pizza free. He’d pull out his wallet and pay for it himself, even though he owned the business.”

Other Sarge-isms: If you’re going to get a dollar’s wages, you better put in a dollar’s worth of work. And, The customer gets what they pay for, but only what they pay for.

Such conservative beliefs likely arose from Sarge’s hard life growing up on the family farm between Madelia and St. James during the Depression. He and his family suffered through it and he never would forget the intrinsic value of an earned dollar. He was a structured man, who seemed to want structure in his environment.

And this was where the younger generation and Sarge seemed to part ways.

“Right or wrong, his way was the way it was going to be done,” said Wally. “And if you didn’t do it his way you would get a tongue-lashing. It didn’t matter if the person was an employee, family member or customer. On rare occasions, even a customer was not out of bounds for a tongue-lashing if he thought they deserved it.”

Wally related a story about Sarge confronting one customer who’d had too much beer. The customer, an MSU football player, had been at a gathering in the restaurant’s party room and was distraught after having broken up with a girlfriend. Upon leaving the restaurant through the back door, the football player started pounding violently on the restaurant’s mailbox. Sarge heard the commotion, went outside, and all five-foot-five of him slammed the football player onto a car hood. Sarge stated that damaging a mailbox was a federal felony and that the player better replace it the next day or else he’d end up in jail. The mailbox was replaced.

Despite Sarge’s tough reputation, Wally said, “Deep down he’s really a very generous and kind person. He has been generous to a fault with people. And he does have a soft heart.”

All three—Wally, Brenda and Diane—agreed that Sarge has never been one to sugarcoat truth, meaning he doesn’t fear calling “a spade a spade,” said Wally. Perhaps that was the reason Sarge won election to a four-year term in the mid-‘80s as Mankato mayor.

The three also talked about the future. They dreamed of starting other Jake’s Pizza restaurants and sprucing up the land in Mankato around the original one. In particular, that land the last few years has become more valuable, with new homes, a revamped shopping center, hundreds of new apartments, new businesses and a growing university bursting at the seams all around. Carstensen Enterprises, controlled by the family, owns the property on their corner of Stadium and Monks, which includes the Maggie’s building and land, Stadium Plaza Shopping Center, a convenience store/gas station, and Highland Liquors. Carstensen Enterprises itself is owned in part by the Boyers, Diane Halverson and her daughter, and Sarge’s son Brian and wife Elaine, who aren’t directly involved in the restaurant business.

Wally Boyer, besides managing Jake’s Stadium Pizza from 1979-1981 and 1989 to the present, ran Highland Liquor in the 1980s. He and Diane have decade’s worth of restaurant and retail experience and are young enough to work another fifteen-plus years in the industry. The Boyers also have two sons interested. Wally and Brenda have discussed expanding to upper North Mankato, where they have customers that already account for 40 percent of their deliveries. The Boyers or Halverson have been asked to expand to Madelia, New Ulm, St. Peter and Waseca, but the time hasn’t been right. In part, the Boyers’ son Andrew won’t graduate from college in Duluth for another two years.

Wally Boyer, the happy media face of Jake’s Stadium Pizza restaurants in Mankato and St. James—if ever selling, he and Brenda (or Diane) wouldn’t miss the ka-ching of the cash register, the feeling of pride in owning a business, or the taste of their trademark thin crust pizza the most. He—and they—are the kind of genuine, down-to-earth people who would most miss the relationships nurtured with their customers.

Wally, for one, would miss Bob Hagen, Minnesota Vikings public relations director, who visits the restaurant four days a week for lunch during Vikings training camp. It was Hagen, after all, who got Boyer’s store manager field passes for the Vikings-Redskins football game in Washington, D.C., this fall. He would miss people like Mike Morris, ex-Vikings long snapper, currently with KFAN, who once hosted a two-hour radio show from the restaurant to honor Sarge as an American hero. He’d miss the Mankato native, who when visiting her mother in town, always buys ten large pizzas and freezes them for the return trip home to Georgia. And don’t forget those customers taking pizzas back to Oregon. He’d also miss the fun surrounding people like the on-air radio announcer from Omaha, Nebraska, who ordered a Jake’s Poorboy sandwich—and got it delivered.

And he’d miss all those Minnesota Vikings, and doing such things as preparing and serving the pre-game meal to the entire Mankato West football team before their state title wins in 1999 and 2002. The Boyers’ son Chris in 1999 rushed for more than 200 yards and three touchdowns and Andrew in 2002 was credited with a momentum-shifting tackle. (The Boyers third son, Jon, has forsaken the family business to be a “starving artist” in New York City, laughed Boyer.)

In hindsight, it’s not likely they will sell. After all, the Carstensen family learned perseverance from Sarge, a man who once traveled the entire length of South Korea on foot. People like that don’t suddenly cash in their chips; they just continue taking orders and marching on.

So Who Is Jake?

“The ‘Jake’ in our name comes from Ernie Jacobson, Sarge’s brother-in-law,” said Wally Boyer, who is married to Sarge’s daughter. Boyer is the media face of Jake’s Stadium Pizza, a buoyant and vivacious personality with a Pepsodent smile. He and wife Brenda purchased the restaurant in Mankato from Sarge in 1997. Sarge’s other daughter, Diane Halverson, purchased the St. James location from her retiring father the same year.

Boyer said, “Ernie and Rose Jacobson started the first Jake’s Pizza in Albert Lea, perfecting all the recipes we still use today in Mankato and St. James, such as the right mixture of spices, the sausage, the fresh sauce, and the dough. Today there are seven Jake’s Pizzas in Minnesota, and one in Palm Springs, California.”

Other Minnesota locations are in Albert Lea, Wells, Montevideo, Willmar and Granite Falls. Each Jake’s Pizza is independently owned. But again, Sarge Carstenson family members own only two of the locations, with the Mankato location the only one having “Stadium” in its name.

The Sarge Speaks

My nickname comes from 22 years in the U.S. Army. I started in 1949 with basic training at Fort Riley, Kansas, where I took leadership school. I took mountain and cold weather training at Fort Carson, Colorado, which included trying to master downhill skiing. I think my legs were too short to ski. The Army sent me on a 13-month tour in Korea, and later two tours in Vietnam. Korea was a tough assignment. I had to travel the peninsula by foot from Pusan to north of the 38th parallel.

After Korea, I applied for recruiting duty and ended up in Mankato, not far from where I grew up between Madelia and St. James. In nine years I enlisted 1,020 men and women into the U.S. Army. I ended up a zone supervisor for the recruiting stations in southern Minnesota, from Willmar to the Iowa border, and left the Army in 1970.

In 1972, I bought Stadium Pizza from a businessman who couldn’t make the restaurant work though he was physically operating it.

As for working there, I remember the Vikings players best. I can still recall Carl Eller and others sitting in the first booth, drinking adult beverages right out of the pitcher. And the presence of the Vikings drew other customers. —Sarge Carstensen, age 81, retired owner of Jake’s Stadium Pizza.

The Missing W?

During Wally Boyer’s first week at tiny Mayville State College in 1971, several people asked him if he was related to Dean Bowyer, who had been a baseball standout at Mayville State ten years earlier. The names sounded the same. And Wally said no.

Not too many years after he started working at Jake’s Stadium Pizza in late 1973, Dean Bowyer showed up one day, who by then was head baseball coach at Minnesota State University. Wally told Bowyer about the earlier mix-ups at Mayville State, and soon the two began needling each other about the proper spelling of Boyer/Bowyer.

Not long ago, Wally Boyer ran into Dean’s son Shane at a department store. Shane was there with his five-year-old son. The first thing Shane’s little boy said to Wally Boyer? “Are you here to buy a ‘W’?”

Of course, his father — or perhaps his grandfather — had put him up to it.

Touchy Subject

I don’t like government regulations on how you have to handle employees. Somebody has to do something terribly bad before you can fire them. If you catch someone stealing and you fire that person, and someone calls you later for a job reference, you can’t tell that company why you fired them. Or we can be sued. You should be able to let these people know so they don’t run into the same problem. —Wally Boyer, co-owner, Jake’s Stadium Pizza in Mankato.

© 2006 Connect Business Magazine. All Rights Reserved.