Bird Dog Hospitality sets big vision for growth with review-topping independent hotel brand

March 9, 2026

Adjust it for inflation, but consider this:

“The saying was ‘Anybody can make a great $60 steak. It takes a great operator to make a great $20 steak,” said Kyle Schock, president and CEO of Bird Dog Hospitality.

Apply that thought to hotels, and you get a sense for the vision behind Bird Dog Hospitality’s EverSpring Inn & Suites brand — the core growth driver for a company that began in private equity, found a niche in hospitality and then further focused on a name that’s going national.

“We’re trying to make EverSpring the great $20 steak of midscale hotel experiences,” Schock said. “We’ve got a model to do midscale hospitality better … because the midscale brands are asleep at the wheel and in a race to be lowest-cost provider, not servicing the guest and eating up fees from owners, so they’re not providing value.”

Shifting industries

Schock, who grew up in Sioux Falls, earned a bachelor’s degree in finance from the University of Sioux Falls in 2011 and had visions of investment banking in the Twin Cities.

It was right around the time Bird Dog Equity Partners, co-founded by his father, Paul Schock, had acquired The Prairie Club in Valentine, Nebraska. The Great Recession was underway, and “they had insane management turnover and basically no one to run the business,” Schock said. “I was newly married and talked to my wife and said, ‘Do you want to go on an adventure for a season and see how it goes?’”

When they got the golf club to break even, “it was a massive success,” he said. “And that got my feet wet in hospitality. It’s all overnight lodging down there. We’re not a golf course; we’re a lodging facility. We’re trying to get people to come stay, and golf is what draws them.”

Family drew him back to Sioux Falls, and he started a marketing firm taking on golf and travel clients. Right around that time, he heard about a couple of retired ranchers in Valentine who were ready to sell a hotel they owned.

“They had built a hotel, it was too much work, and what was unique was they’d already dropped their franchise and were running it as an independent brand,” Schock said. “I saw opportunity because it was under-managed and they didn’t know how to market or sell or run a hotel. And to be fair, I didn’t either.”

He brought the opportunity to Chad Hatch, who co-founded Bird Dog with Paul Schock.

“I said, ‘Can you raise money for this, and can you introduce me to someone who knows how to run hotels?’ and he said, ‘I know exactly the person.’”

The referral was to John Pesicka, who had served as chief operating officer of The Summit Group Inc., which peaked at 45 hotels.

“I remember talking him out of retirement saying we’ll do the old dog, young dog thing,” Schock said. “‘I’ll put in the work if you can teach me everything you know,’ and we hit it off, and it was an awesome partnership.”

They acquired the property in Valentine, then launched a fund called Bird Dog Hospitality, investing in five hotels with Bird Dog Equity Partners leading the financing.

“We found a niche,” Schock said. “We started with an idea, and it took us a couple years, but we found … something that makes sense.”

There’s an entire underserved market in midscale hotels in secondary and tertiary markets, he said.

“A lot of times, local developers will build a nice hotel for the community, and they’ll eventually want to sell, and there are not a lot of well-capitalized, respectful buyers who are local and who are going to invest in that property and reinvest in the community.”

Those hotels typically have “flags” associated with national brands.

“And those flags end up eating up all the profits,” Schock said. “So we found a strategy to come in with capital, buy properties in the Midwest in really strong markets typically overlooked by larger private equity groups, and we could run our own brand.”

Creating EverSpring

In EverSpring, Schock and his team essentially reverse engineered the sort of guest experience that causes a hotel to climb to the top of online rating sites.

Without the support of a national brand, “you’ve got to figure out your own technology and branding and procurement,” he said. “It’s a lot of work, but it’s all work that pays off for a guest experience because there’s all kinds of rules and regulations that franchises, especially midscale, make you follow that aren’t always guest-friendly.”

EverSpring focuses on “when you’re a guest, what items do you touch and experience the most?” Schock said. “Your bed you sleep on. We pay more for our beds than everybody else does. We pay more for our pillows and linens. Every bed you sleep on is going to be the best you’ve ever slept on in your life, and I’m not hyperbolizing.”

EverSpring partners with Beds by Design for its mattress and pillows. The retailer has stores in Sioux Falls and Fargo.

“We put some of our nicest models in there that we designed together,” owner Chad Yde said. “Customers love it so much they call and find out where the beds were made. They reach out to us, and we end up sending them across the country, and he gets great five-star reviews.”

Yde said he has worked with other hotel brands that “tell me people don’t care what they sleep on. I say they’re missing the point. The whole point of a hotel room is to sleep in it. … You wouldn’t believe how many operators don’t think that way. That’s what’s great about Kyle is he’s committed to excellence. He’s putting his customers first.”

EverSpring also puts a larger TV in guest rooms than many hotels, Schock said.

“We have a great shower head,” he added. “We looked at the touch points people actually experience in a hotel and said let’s focus on those. Let’s spend our money there.”

Breakfast “is a huge touch point, and we have amazing waffles and a giant topping station,” he continued.

“We have Coffea coffee because 90 percent of people drink coffee, and they’ve been amazing.”

Sioux Falls-based Coffea Roasterie provides coffee in the breakfast area of EverSpring hotels.

“This is a free amenity (for guests), so we figured it out, and we came up with some smart solutions,” Coffea wholesale director Dan Sinkgraven said.

“The midscale everyman hotel is not a place you can just throw dollars at problems. We’re always talking about ways to level up the coffee services, really focusing on the small details. And I think that’s what EverSpring does really well. They have reevaluated every portion of the stay for guests.”

The two businesses found a way to offer a signature Coffea coffee without downgrading, he said.

“We have pretty specific sourcing guidelines we follow, and values, and that has been part of the conversation,” Sinkgraven said. “How can we make this a win for producers, Coffea the roaster, EverSpring and its guests? How can we make everybody win?”

Every EverSpring property also has a pool, hot tub and fitness center, though smaller to keep costs down, as well as patios with firepits and water features.

“At the end of the day, your amenity list is important, but what people really want is a clean hotel with no problems and super-friendly people who are going to take care of them,” Schock said.

The move to an independent brand also reflects travelers’ changing demographics. While 90 percent of baby boomer travelers subscribe to a hotel loyalty program, “in Gen Z it’s 60 percent and coming down every day,” Schock said. “What does everybody want? They want a great experience, and everybody goes online.”

He estimates that 97 percent of travelers check online reviews before booking.

“If we have the best pictures and online reputation and experience, why would we pay a brand hundreds of thousands a year to fly their flag and get a bunch of rules that may or may not make sense in the local market?”

The EverSpring in Hill City held the No. 1 spot in South Dakota on Trip Advisor for months. An EverSpring also held the top spot in North Dakota.

“Part of it is we kind of run the hotel like a little family, and I think it’s picking the correct staff and driving that positive culture,” said Amanda Blume, who served as a general manager before becoming regional operations manager.

“I do think it takes those extra special managers to make it work, but I feel like we’re coming up with some really great strategic plans to pinpoint those managers.”

Blume said one guest wrote a review that he couldn’t believe she was helping with breakfast and folding laundry as a general manager.

“That’s what makes us really strong. The GMs are active in the properties,” Blume said. “The sky’s the limit. I’m just super-excited. We have properties in our vision, and it’s exciting to be able to sit back and watch it grow.”

Bird Dog evolves

The Bird Dog portfolio includes five EverSpring hotels throughout South Dakota, North Dakota, Iowa and Minnesota, and five in development.

“We’d like to stay in the Midwest for now,” Schock said.

The overall portfolio includes 18 hotels, three resorts and  The Prairie Club golf resort. At peak season, there are 600 employees.

“Over the last year or so, we’ve streamlined to where we’re just a hospitality company,” Schock said. “We’re all about taking care of guests and finding great hotel-related investments.”

Hatch has since moved on to become a strategic adviser at Elgethun Capital Management. Paul Schock stepped away from daily leadership of Bird Dog in 2017 and serves as a senior partner.

“One of the titles they throw around is ‘chief wisdom officer,’ and that should be true for any organization,” Paul Schock said. “I’ve made so many mistakes, and I’ve always tried to learn from them. I think together we make really good decisions. Kyle has put together an amazing team. Our culture is wonderful. Our people say it’s the best job they’ve ever had.”

It’s not a family-owned business — the Schocks operate on behalf of their investor partners — but father and son have worked side by side since Kyle was 6 and began as a golf caddy for his dad.

“He reminds me of me 30 years ago in terms of energy, and he’s got great ideas and is very inclusive with his team,” Paul Schock said. “Kyle and I talk virtually every day and make all kinds of decisions, and I can’t think of a time we’ve ever argued.”

The bigger Bird Dog has become, “the fewer deals we’ve done,” Kyle Schock said. “I think a big discipline we’ve had is to stay in our lane with midscale. We know you’ve got to serve one customer and get really good at serving that customer, and for us that’s middle-class America. That’s what drives us. We love the midscale segment. We love your average American.”

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