Dead Bob's is taking its burger-and-wings concept to Largo. Owner Ben Scherlis has signed a lease for a 2,072-square-foot space at 440 West Bay Drive, inside Horizon West Bay — the $80 million mixed-use development the city is positioning as the anchor of a new entertainment district along that stretch of West Bay Drive. The Largo City Commission approved the lease 5-1 on Aug. 18, with an opening tentatively planned for sometime in 2027.
The Largo outpost would be the fourth Dead Bob's in the Tampa Bay market, joining existing locations in west St. Pete, Tampa, and Madeira Beach. Scherlis also operates Bob's Side Piece in west St. Pete, making the Largo lease his fifth branded food-and-beverage concept in the region.
The 2,072-square-foot space sits inside a parking garage building that faces an outdoor stage and public plaza — infrastructure that maps directly to the location's programming identity. Per the operator's Instagram, Dead Bob's plans to book Tampa Bay acts and Florida bands passing through on a mostly-weekend live-music calendar, a draw that fits the entertainment-district mandate Horizon West Bay is being built around.
Scherlis is tentatively targeting 11 a.m. to 3 a.m. daily, with the kitchen staying open late. The Largo menu will be leaner than what the chain's other locations carry, but retains the core items the brand has run on: burgers, wings, and daily specials.
Horizon West Bay's $80 million footprint is central to Largo's strategy on West Bay Drive. The corridor has lacked the commercial density and late-night programming that downtown St. Pete and surrounding districts have built over time, and the city's entertainment-district designation is a bid to close that gap. A bar operating until 3 a.m. with a late kitchen and weekend music programming is a deliberate fit for that tenant brief — and the plaza-and-stage design built into Horizon West Bay's parking garage block suggests the development was conceived with exactly that operator profile in mind.
