Boloco, a popular burrito chain, is closing its location in Hanover. The basement restaurant has already been renamed to BocaSoca, and it will be officially launching a reimagined menu and interior in October.
Lyme resident Conicia Jackson and Boloco chef Shamar Shand bought a majority share of the Hanover location from John Pepper ’91 in February 2024. Pepper gave up his minority stake in June, and Jackson and Shand changed the name to BocaSoca — named for the Spanish word for “mouth” and Soca, the Caribbean dance.
While the menu and online ordering platform remain the same for now, the team plans to launch a new website and new menu additions in the coming weeks, according to Jackson. The menu will also be “streamlined,” she added, to make it “easier for people to order.”
“We’re not interested in taking away anyone’s favorites,” Jackson said. “What Boloco had going on is a great thing. We just want to enhance that.”
She added that she is “consulting with Boloco chefs,” including Shand, to develop new additions to the menu based on “global influences.”
“I feel like for a lot of people, it could be very difficult to travel,” Jackson said. “They might want to taste a piece of food from other cultures.”
The first Boloco location was founded by Pepper and three other Tuck alumni in 1997 at the Berklee College of Music in Boston. The Hanover Boloco, their ninth location, opened in 2004. Since then, including the Hanover closure, all but one Boston location have closed. In an interview, Pepper explained that he and his partners sold the company to a private equity firm in 2007 but bought it back in 2015 after a “difficult situation” with the firm. The company has been downsizing since 2014.
Pepper said the ownership change was a “natural progression” and that he is “done and tired” after the COVID pandemic, which impacted restaurants around the country.
“For better or worse, Boloco is attached to me personally,” Pepper said. “This [change] allows for [Jackson and Shand] to move on and create their own identity.”
Jackson began working as a team member at Boloco in the summer of 2023. She said she was “shocked” when she found out she could be a part-owner.
“I didn’t come in like, ‘Hey, I could be your boss,’” Jackson said. “I just wanted to be good at, for example, stuffing chip bags … I was so humbled by it and it felt really good.”
Pepper said that employee development was his “focus.”
“Restaurants are dead end jobs, for the most part, unless you put in place development opportunities and pay people well,” Pepper said.
Jackson said that giving food away to sports teams and charity events like the Prouty was a “highlight” of the job. She added she “hope[s]” BocaSoca will be a “driving force in the community” going forward even though it is “super tough” to “manage expenses.”
“We’re not going to shirk on giving back,” she said. “I think that’s the thing that keeps people coming here.”
One customer, Drew Holevac ’29, said he loved the food at Boloco.
“It’s really good,” he said.
Iris WeaverBell ’28 is a news reporter. She is from Portland, Ore., and is majoring in economics and minoring in public policy.
