4 minute read
Moose Outpost is a restaurant in the town of Dubois, Wyoming, near Yellowstone National Park. Within Dubois, they serve a unique and seasonal customer base, according to Karrie Davis, who owns Moose Outpost with her husband Bob.
“In the summer, the bulk of our business is tourism,” said Davis. “A lot of locals support us, but during our open season from May to October, it's mostly tourists.”
For both tourists passing through and local residents, Moose Outpost stands out. While there are plenty of restaurants in Dubois, Moose Outpost filled a specific niche when Bob and Karrie opened up in July of 2018.
“There is no drive-up fast food in our town,” said Davis. “It's a very small mountain town, and there's no place where you can go for just a burger. Our drive-up window is a big novelty. When we opened up last year, we had a very good summer.”
Davis said Moose Outpost is a Christian-based business, and she feels she has her own “little ministry, as far as loving people and feeding them” in the form of her restaurant. They sell a variety of quick-serve staples, from cheeseburgers to malts, and their French fries are hand-cut individually every morning and never frozen. Their most popular option is Combo Number 3 – cheeseburger, fries and a drink.
"The giant moose out front makes them a recognizable staple and gives them a connection to both local history and Davis's family history."
Their food has made them very popular in town, and the giant moose out front makes them a recognizable staple and gives them a connection to both local history and Davis's family history.
“My father made the moose 47 years ago,” Davis said. “He was an artist here. The moose has stood in front of several business in the town, but it was most recently at my Dad's home for quite some time. We brought him back downtown and now he's on Main Street again.”
When Moose Outpost opened last year, they worked with their bank to find a point-of-sale system that would be good for their business. The first system their bank recommended was difficult to use, and they found the company unresponsive. As a result, they switched to Vital.
“I started out with another company and another system. They were unresponsive and unavailable -- I was getting ready to open up and didn't even have a POS system,” Davis said. “Once I switched to Vital, I had a short lead time up to when our restaurant opened, but everyone was very helpful. The product has been very good.”
Davis said that Vital has served her purposes well so far, and she hopes to continue using more features as the business grows.“I have a bookkeeper and we're doing more with it,” Davis said. “We started using the time clocks, and I want to utilize more of the options.”
For now, she's enjoying Vital, and it's helping her to stand out in the town to both local residents and the tourists on their way to Yellowstone.
“It's very smooth and it works great,” Davis said. “It works very well for us. People always come in and comment and say this is the fanciest thing I've seen, there's not much like this around.”
