Candice Ward never planned to run a restaurant. Her background was in accounting, and then weddings — 160 of them a year at a 13-acre estate in Topsfield, Massachusetts, before the family set their sights on New Hampshire. But Waterville Valley has a way of rewriting plans, and the Valley Chop House, the steakhouse-turned-late-night lounge that has quietly become the social hub of Town Square, is proof of that.
Candice and her son Kyle joined hosts Charlie and Ken on Waterville Unwrapped to talk about how their family ended up here, what it took to build the Valley Chop House from scratch, and why they’re betting on Waterville’s future.
The Road to Waterville
The original plan, Candice explains, was to expand their Massachusetts wedding venue business northward. A realtor pointed them toward the Snowy Owl Inn, where they saw potential to convert the pool space into a second wedding venue. They purchased it in June 2020 — arriving, as Kyle puts it, “smack dab in the middle of COVID.” Contractors were booked solid for years, and the ambitious renovation moved slowly. They spent four years at the Snowy Owl doing what they could themselves — flooring, drywall — while waiting for plumbers, electricians, and GCs to become available.
It was Sean, Candice’s husband and Kyle’s father, who fell hardest for the place. He visited before the purchase and came home raving about the square on a ski day, the village feel, the energy. “He fell in love with that sort of village aspect of it,” Candice recalled. Eventually, a buyer came along for the Snowy Owl and the family moved on. But by then, they had already signed a lease on a new space and begun the Valley Chop House build-out.
Steaks, Then Nightlife
The restaurant concept was simple at its core: “We love steak as a family,” Candice said, “so we wanted a local place where you could get a good steak.” But Kyle, who has an office above Dreams and Visions on Town Square, kept noticing something when he worked late. Groups of people would wander through the square at 9:30 or 10 at night, asking where they could get a drink — and there was nowhere to send them. “I want to be open late,” he said. “I want to give people a nightlife spot.”
The result is a place with two personalities. From opening until around 10 p.m., the Valley Chop House is an upscale sit-down steakhouse. After that, the music gets a little louder and the lights come down. They’re open until midnight — or later, technically until 1 a.m. if the crowd is there and having fun. “You guys know us,” Kyle told Charlie and Ken. “We’ll extend it a little bit.”
Built by Hand, by Family
The design of the space was largely Kyle and Sean’s work. Kyle drew inspiration from cigar lounges, upscale bars, and restaurants he’d visited over the years — dark leather, cowhide booth accents, mahogany tables. The high-back chairs at the bar? Those are the same chairs used at the Ritz Carlton Hotel in Boston, just in dark brown leather instead of blue. Candice, who says she can’t visualize spaces until they’re finished, walked in after the build-out was complete and was floored. “It’s amazing,” she said. “It looks so different.” She’s particularly proud of the bar itself — the stepped bottle display and the lighting underneath it — which Kyle designed.
Lighting was a serious project. Kyle kept a notebook full of web addresses and bookmarks: this chandelier, these sconces, those Edison bulbs. No bright LEDs. Everything had to feel right.
A Family That Works Together
The Valley Chop House is a four-person operation: Candice, Kyle, Sean, and Kyle’s younger brother Braden, who is currently learning the bartending trade. Both boys grew up in the family’s hospitality businesses — Kyle was 14 when the wedding venue first opened. Working together has its quirks, including dinner conversations that drift entirely into work talk, and the occasional blur between “mom” and “boss.” (“He’s technically my boss,” Candice admitted, laughing.) But both of them push back on the conventional wisdom that family and business don’t mix. “Am I going to go into business with my mother, my brother, my father,” Kyle said, “or some random guy I met a few months ago?”
Candice put it simply: “I feel very lucky that all four of us are friends.”
What the Valley Needs
Kyle, who lives at Mountain Brook and has watched the community closely from his perch above Town Square, is optimistic about Waterville Valley’s direction. He’s noticed more people his age — mid-to-late 20s and early 30s — making their way up to the valley over the past couple of years, drawn by skiing, snowboarding, hiking, and the outdoor lifestyle generally. He’s enthusiastic about projects like the new Adventure Center, and echoes Candice’s view that the valley needs more physical activities to offer beyond skiing — axe throwing, disc golf, and maybe a skate park again someday. (Braden, Candice notes, used the old skate park every time he visited and was genuinely disappointed when it closed.)
Candice floated a more elaborate idea she’d seen in Clearwater Beach, Florida: a golf cart with oversized wheels driving around selling frozen margaritas and daiquiris. Which changed to Charlie and Ken’s desire to bring a Pedal Pub to the Valley. In an open-container town like Waterville Valley, she noted, the concept might actually work. “Make sure you give me some royalties for that,” she told Charlie.
For the Valley Chop House this summer: the patio is opening, lunch service is likely coming, and there’s talk of a lounge area with a sectional outside. Kyle sounds ready for it. He’s said more than once that even if he had a hundred million dollars in the bank, he’d still find a bar to work on weekends. “I find bartending and service industry stuff to be honestly fun,” he said. “You meet people, you talk.”
The full episode is a warm, wide-ranging conversation that covers Sean’s independent film distribution work, New Hampshire’s liquor laws (which still baffle Candice), the family’s road trip tradition through cities like Savannah and Charlotte, and Kyle’s strong opinion that a Cosmo must be made with citron vodka — not regular Tito’s. That’s the secret, he says.