Lucky 13
“Back in seventh grade, I told the teacher I was going to be either a Marine Corps scout sniper or a bartender.” Rob Dutton grinned when he said it, sitting inside Lucky 13. This is the bar he has owned since 2009, the bar people travel hours for, the bar with walls covered in awards and firefighter patches and stories. It is not lost on him that the kid who made that prediction had no idea what was coming: the moves, the upheavals, the loneliness, the grit, and ultimately the community he would build in a tight, lively room a stone’s throw from the ballpark.
Rob’s life started in Nashua, New Hampshire, but he left before he could form a memory of it. His father’s military career meant constant change: Italy, Germany, Alabama, North Dakota, and the Northwest. He remembered being a boy in Livorno, Italy walking toward the beach where ropes split the shoreline in two - one side for American military families, the other for everyone else. It was a tiny snapshot of his childhood, always somewhere unfamiliar, always learning to adapt.
He went to school in North Dakota, then Boise, and the beginning of high school in Alabama - each place demanding a new version of himself. “Every one of those is completely different,” he said. “You’re constantly figuring out where you fit in as a person because the person you were in one place isn’t necessarily who you are in the next.”
Rob's parents divorced, and by fifteen, in 1991, he was essentially raising himself. Traditional school had lost its meaning, so he walked away during ninth grade and enrolled in the Job Corps in northern Washington. It was the first time he could build toward something solid. He threw himself into learning everything - construction, maintenance, repair, plumbing, electrical. It was the first place where someone invested in him - enough to ask him to stay longer so he could pass along skills the previous instructor had missed. Then, at almost eighteen, he made a decision that no teenage version of himself could have imagined.
“I moved to Utah on December 4, 1994, because the Olympics were coming, and I knew I could get work.” Rob arrived with $200 in his pocket and an ’84 Chevy Citation hatchback, “and that was it.” On his second day, he landed a roofing job. He stayed loyal to that first company for six years, became close with the family that owned it, and eventually followed a colleague to Park City when he branched out on his own. It was good money. It was steady. It was the life he had built for himself with his hands.
Still, the world shifted again around the time the Olympics were nearing. Construction slowed. Everyone had their crews in place. And into that quiet space stepped Rob’s next chapter - the bartender part of that old junior high vow. He began helping at the Trolley Wing Company at Trolley Square. It started small - a few extra hands needed in a little trolley car. But Rob showed up ready to work, and that was all anyone ever needed from him. Soon, the owner wanted him more permanently. Then ownership changed, and within a month the new guys asked him to run the place.
It was familiar by then - someone noticing his capability, seeing that Rob did not know how to do anything halfway. He stayed for years: through transitions, through shifts, through one more change of ownership. And then, with two men he had come to trust, he began imagining something entirely different.
That something became Lucky 13, which opened in September 2009. The building had been VFW Atomic Post 4355 for years. For a short stretch it had already been operating under the name Lucky 13 - a name Rob and his partners chose to keep. “It wasn’t established enough to have an impact on us,” Rob said. “We decided to keep it and make it our own.”
To step into Lucky 13 now is to enter a place full of personality - patches, flags, fire coats, awards, stories layered on every inch of wall space. But in 2009, Rob described it as dim, closed off, heavy. Steel doors blocked sunlight on both sides; the bathroom needed gutting; the kitchen was barely usable. Rob rebuilt it - literally. Years of construction and roofing came back to him as he cut in glass doors, brightened the interior, opened the patios, redesigned the kitchen, and created a space that felt lived in rather than walled off.
And then came the menu - the conversation that stretched nearly ten hours in a single room. Three men tossing ideas back and forth. Rob insisting, repeatedly, that hamburgers were the way to go. Not just burgers - great burgers, with a hundred possibilities built from fresh, local ingredients that honored Utah. He won that argument.
Today, the beef comes from Ogden, “three days hoof to bun.” The buns and biscuits arrive six days a week from Vosen’s, the produce is sourced locally through Nicholas & Company, and the bacon is smoked in-house every single day. “As someone who is not from here, it’s important to support the people around you and to let them support you.”
On any given day there are some fourteen burgers on the menu - from the simple cheeseburger Rob believes every restaurant should be judged by, to the pastrami burger he had never heard of until moving to Utah, to the giant, over-the-top creations that tempt customers into taking on challenges. There are spicy burgers that actually live up to the warnings, mushroom Swiss made with mushrooms simmered in red wine and garlic and rosemary, and a fry sauce that is uniquely theirs.
Everything has a purpose. Everything has a reason. “Everything is a light canvas to add flavor to,” Rob said. “We didn’t want to be just another local place that offered burgers. There are plenty of those.” The sides are equally thoughtful - Cajun fries, garlic fries, fried pickle spears, onion rings, and a rotating cast of experiments. Their fries have taken top honors in City Weekly multiple years in a row. Brunch arrives on Sundays with an award-winning Bloody Mary, award-winning chilaquiles, a beloved country fried steak drowning in house-smoked bacon gravy, and fresh local eggs.
The space itself is tight - “It was tighter before 2020,” Rob admitted - but it is also electric, the sort of place where a company Christmas party might fill the back room one night while a group gathers quietly the next day to celebrate the life of a loved one. He sees everyone: politicians, police officers, first responders, travelers with luggage (he had 200 luggage tags printed once and they disappeared in three weeks), lawyers, skaters, locals, tourists. “I think the shorter list would be who our customers are not,” he laughed.
But Rob’s warmth goes beyond his customers. His affection for firefighters runs deep. His two original partners, Ron Lay and Jason Stucki, were both firefighters, and their gear still hangs proudly on the wall. Jason has moved on to other endeavors, but Rob and Ron still own Lucky 13 together - along with two additional locations.
Ten years after Lucky 13 opened, they launched Lucky’s Iron Door Roadhouse in Jordan Landing in November 2019. It is a licensed restaurant that is bright, airy, family-friendly, with a full glass east wall and a stellar team that boasts ninety percent retention. In 2024, they added Rabbit’s Foot Brewing in West Valley City, partnering with Rob’s longtime friend Cody McKendrick, the brewer behind Bewilder Brewing downtown.
All the while, Rob has been raising two sons - one a baseball standout who has spent thirteen years playing at a high level, the other immersed in science and astronomy. He lights up when he speaks about them. “Going home and hanging out with them - that alone time - that’s what I cherish more and more over the years.” In addition, he helped Jasmine and Angelique Gordon launch Patricia's Purpose, a nonprofit honoring their mother that supports those in need - children, schools, and local families.
And perhaps the greatest surprise for Rob is where his passion has landed. Lucky 13 began as a hamburger and whiskey bar, but in 2015 he dove deep into agave spirits, earning certifications, traveling to Mexico, building relationships with families, and developing a collection rarely seen in Utah.
More importantly, though, his passion has become people. “My biggest passion is watching team members come through and be successful.” Rob loves when someone who arrived by bus or Uber walks him outside a year later to show him the car they bought. He loves when longtime staff members say they are leaving because they are opening their own business. He loves the connections, the growth, the stories that unfold at the bar he built from grit and instinct. “Our core values at all three locations are hospitality, consistency, quality, cleanliness, and community,” he said. “As I’ve gotten older, I’ve leaned more into the hospitality side of things." Laughing, he added, "I’m not so anti-people anymore.”
He smiled again - a big, warm, self-knowing smile, the kind that comes only from a man who has lived several lives before finding the one that fits. “If a bar can be successful, then what can we help change in the community? What can we help change with the people? What can we help change with hospitality?” He paused, then added the line that felt like the quiet truth behind everything he has spent his life building: “We got together and decided we could really make a change.”
