In 1978, brothers Eugene and John Jetts opened Jetts Party Shoppe & Pizzeria in Sterling Heights, Michigan. They wanted to share their love for Detroit-style pizza, known for its thick, crispy crust, formed by baking it in a rectangular steel pan.
Robert Dancer, 56, first tried Jet’s Pizza during high school at one of the franchise’s early locations.
“It was a little bit of a drive, but the slices were delicious,” said Dancer, who grew up in Michigan. “It seemed to be a cut above the rest.”
Today, there are hundreds of Jet’s Pizza franchises in 23 states, with 10 located in Colorado. On Feb. 26, Dancer is set to open Colorado’s 11th location, at 2609 Pearl Street in Boulder.
“We specialize in Detroit-style deep dish pizza, which nobody in the Boulder market has,” Dancer said. “We’re really excited to bring this product that a lot of people here don’t know about,” even though it has been a part of Dancer’s life for decades.
After high school, Dancer moved to California to pursue a career as a musician. While there, he picked up production work for movies and commercials, along with a job at a pizza place.
“I just seemed to have a knack for it,” Dancer said. “I’m good with people, I like working in a team environment and pizza seemed to be a natural fit.”
Upon moving back to Michigan in the 1990s to raise his daughter, Casey, Dancer decided to fulfill his long-time dream of opening his own business. After exploring various franchise concepts, he serendipitously chose Jet’s Pizza.
“It was kind of a fluke,” Dancer said. He was already a fan of the franchise’s pizza, but decided to launch his own store only after meeting John Jett, whose son was on the same football team as Dancer’s stepson. So in 1998, Dancer and his then wife, Linda, opened a Jet’s Pizza in Northville, Michigan, and later added a second in-state location in 2000, followed by a third in 2010.
In 2015, Casey Dancer started school at CU Boulder and, while taking classes, picked up shifts at Blackjack Pizza. After visiting his daughter in Boulder and falling in love with the city, Robert Dancer bought a house in Gunbarrel, allowing him to split his time between Colorado and Michigan. During the pandemic, Robert and Casey decided to bring Detroit-style pizza to Boulder.
“This has been a long-standing dream of ours,” Robert said. “We’re pizza people.”
The father-daughter co-owners started leasing their Pearl Street storefront in January 2023. Over the last year, they experienced delays with permitting and construction.
“We’ve had so many disappointments,” Dancer said. “We were given a timeline of eight to 10 weeks in the summer, when they started construction.” Despite planning for an October 2023 opening, they learned in November that the store’s gas meter required upgrades.
Once the new gas meter is installed and the Dancers conduct the necessary tests on their pizza ovens, Jet’s Pizza in Boulder will be set to open for business in late February.
Similar to other Jet’s Pizza locations, the one on Pearl Street will feature pizzas crafted with homemade dough, daily hand-ground cheese and locally sourced produce. It will also offer Jet’s Pizza’s signature ranch dressing, which Dancer developed himself.
“Jet’s has famous ranch dressing, and I’m the guy that gave them this secret sauce,” Dancer said.
Around a decade ago, Dancer started buying buttermilk from a local dairy farm across the street from his Northville Jet’s Pizza to make his ranch. When Dancer gave Eugene Jett a taste, Jett decided to start using the buttermilk and Dancer’s recipe at all Jet’s Pizza locations.
The dairy farm “spent $3 million on a full remodel two years ago that is directly related to the buttermilk sales to Jet’s,” Dancer said. Last year, Dancer sold around $40,000 worth of ranch dressing — available in squeeze bottles — at the Northville Jet’s Pizza.
Jet’s Pizza on Pearl Street will soft open the week of Jan. 22, from Monday through Sunday, 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Starting Feb. 26, it will be open Monday through Thursday from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m., Friday and Saturday from 11 a.m. to midnight, and on Sunday from noon to 10 p.m. To mark the grand opening, the Dancers will offer a promotional deal: half off all pizzas, with free pizza dough sticks topped with butter, garlic and mozzarella.
“We’ve had people try to come in and order,” Dancer said. “We definitely have an eager customer base that’s been very patient waiting for us to open.”
“We can’t wait to get open and serve the town,” he added. “I think they’re really going to embrace us wholeheartedly, and I know we’re going to do well.”