BozWellz Founder Thankful for Restaurant Career Steeped in Service

Cindy Bosley opened the popular Storm Lake restaurant a month after completing her last BVU class. Twenty-five years later, she has been honored by the Iowa Restaurant Association.

Cindy (Peters) Bosley ’95 completed her classwork at Buena Vista University in December 1994. One month later, she purchased a Storm Lake restaurant site and its contents. And on Feb. 6, 1995, three months before her formal BVU Commencement, she opened for business.

BozWellz Pub and Eaterie was born 25 years ago this month.

“We’ve had quite a year,” Bosley says from her busy restaurant in downtown Storm Lake. “We served more than 700 people in our ninth Thanksgiving Feed. We earned a grant from Tyson Fresh Meats for the work we do with our Thanksgiving meal. We’ve kept incredibly busy here and with our growing catering enterprise. And, we received an honor from the Iowa Restaurant Association in our 25th year in business.”

"I look at it this way: I’m still helping people; I’m serving them, and I’m passionate about doing it right.”

Cindy Bosley

Bosley was feted as one of “40 Women to Watch in the Hospitality Industry,” and one of only two from northwest Iowa to make the list. Bosley attended a reception and received a plaque presented by Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds.

“I gave Governor Reynolds a hug and stepped on her foot in the process,” Bosley says with a laugh. “I leaned close to the her and said, ‘Governor, I’m on your foot, and I can’t get off of it!’”

The story leads to more laughter from a pair of Bosley’s employees. Much of her restaurant and catering crew, a number that counts about 20, has been with her from the start, allowing one of northwest Iowa’s chief creators of cheesecakes, desserts, pasta dishes, and more, to grow along with Storm Lake, her hometown.

Buena Vista University, she says, has played a vital role in her career.

“I was working full-time (at G. Williqours Restaurant) and being a full-time mother when I decided to go back to school,” she says. “It took me three years to earn my associate’s degree at Iowa Central Community College. I then took night classes at BVU in Spencer for a few years until spending my last year on campus in Storm Lake."

“I studied. I worked at it,” she adds. “I had a goal, and I made it.”

Bosley’s BVU focus centered on entrepreneurship, accounting, marketing, and more.

Her free Thanksgiving meal matches BVU’s ever-present mission to engage while serving the greater community. The event sprang from a conversation she witnessed at her restaurant nearly a decade ago. Nine women sat at lunch sharing details of how they’d spent Thanksgiving alone. Most of their children, they disclosed, celebrated the holiday with their immediate families while gearing up for Black Friday sales in bigger cities.

“I didn’t want people to be alone on Thanksgiving,” Bosley says. “So, our staff began preparing food for people to enjoy on the holiday and it soon grew. We now serve more than 700 at Lake Avenue Lounge, a place we have an interest in. We have to turn away volunteers because we have so much help.”

Tyson Fresh Meats awarded Bosley a grant for $2,500 in November to assist with the effort.

“I don’t sleep much in the days before Thanksgiving as there is so much to do,” Bosley says. “Thankfully, we have so much help on that day, I get to spend most of the actual meal walking around and visiting with people who attend.”

The energy from that special Thanksgiving celebration, in many ways, fuels the restauranteur for months, keeping Bosley the business leader fired up for a future of service in and around Storm Lake.

“Originally, I wanted to study nursing because I’d worked at a nursing home,” she says of an early career goal. “Once I got into the restaurant business, I realized how much I enjoyed it. I look at it this way: I’m still helping people; I’m serving them, and I’m passionate about doing it right.”

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