Seward moved from Delphi, Indiana, to Brown County at age 13 with his brother, Dale Jr., and father, Dale Sr.
He bussed tables, washed dishes, and worked as a server at the Artists Colony Inn from age 14 to 20. During those later teen years, he’ d go to school in the morning, work at Bear Hardware, and then head to the inn to work a few more hours.“ I was a hustler,” Seward said. Penny Scroggins, who co-owns the hardware store with her husband, Curt, said Seward often would drive cars to the hardware store and park them with a forsale sign in them.
Seward said he sometimes found clients while working at the hardware store. People would come in to ask him where they could find“ for sale” signs, and when he’ d take them to the right spot in the store, he’ d ask them what they were selling.
“ I ended up buying a couple of cars that way,” he said.
His relationship with the Scrogginses proved helpful in other ways on his journey to becoming a business owner.
Seward said he was a huge Pizza King fan from when he grew up in Delphi, and when he spotted a for-lease sign at Salt Creek Plaza on a lunch break in 2007, he called his father, who had befriended a neighbor back in Delphi who worked as a delivery truck driver for Pizza King. The father called his friend and asked about the franchise, and, Seward said, it was surprisingly easy and inexpensive. The chain charged neither a franchise fee nor a percentage of restaurant sales but required Seward to buy ingredients and supplies from them. Seward said he also got help from the Scrogginses.“ They were very supportive,” he said,“ and Curt actually co-signed on a small business loan to help me get going.”
Seward combined the loan with $ 20,000 he had saved— mostly from selling cars— and opened his first restaurant at age 20.
Seward hired three friends from high school and a colleague from the inn, and they got to work. Everybody did pretty much everything that was needed. Seward, too, would take orders, make the pizza, put it in the oven, and serve it. Even his high school sweetheart, and now wife, Kharysa, would deliver pizzas in a pinch.
With low overhead, the restaurant became profitable right away, he said.
“ Did it ever make a huge profit? No, but it was a stepping stone,” Seward said.“ It got me a ton of experience.”
Some of that experience involved less-thansupportive customers. Seward remembered one occasion on which a woman was unhappy about not being able to get a deal without a coupon. After Seward told her she needed a coupon, she demanded to speak to the manager.
“ I was, you know, maybe 20, 21 but I looked like I was 14,” he said.“ I was tall, but I didn’ t weigh anything, and [ had a ] baby face.”
When he told the customer he was the manager, she said she’ d just come back the next day and talk to the owner. She had no comeback when he told her he was the owner, too. Seward ran into some startup challenges. As he lacked bookkeeping skills, Penny Scroggins functioned as his accountant for the first year of the Pizza King venture. She said she remembered a day on which Seward rode his motorcycle to the hardware store to bring his payroll paperwork, which he carried in a backpack. Only he had forgotten to zip the backpack, and when he arrived he realized the paperwork was likely scattered through various Nashville streets.
Scroggins and Seward had to call the employees to get information about how many hours they had worked.
Despite some of the hiccups, Scroggins said she knew Seward would succeed.
“ He is one of the hardest-working young men that I’ ve ever met,” she said.“ You’ ll never hear him complaining about how much work he has to do.”
From early on when he worked a lot of hours as a teenager to running multiple businesses now, Scroggins said Seward has always tried to improve, to take the next step.“ He’ s just an exceptional young man,” she said. A year after he opened Pizza King, Seward launched a party rental business with bounce houses, wedding tents, and tables and chairs. He sold that business to his brother, who still owns it.
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Nov./ Dec. 2025 • Our Brown County 17