Denver restaurants scale up to survive
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Illustration: Aïda Amer/Axios
It's getting harder to be the little guy in Denver's restaurant scene.
Why it matters: Denver still loves its independent neighborhood joints — but the economics increasingly reward operators who can get bigger.
Driving the news: A Q2 jobs report from the Colorado Chamber Foundation and Aspen Technology Labs, out this week, found restaurants had the steepest decline in job postings of any industry in the state.
- Postings fell 9.9% year over year, even as overall listings statewide grew 1.5%.
State of plate: As rising strain crush already-thin margins, a counterintuitive survival strategy is taking hold: Open more restaurants, not fewer.
- More can be more. Multiple locations let operators share managers, accountants, staff and back-office costs, Colorado Restaurant Association spokesperson Denise Mickelsen tells Axios.
- Groups also gain leverage on everything from food and booze to linens, insurance and credit-card processing.
- And they get a cushion: A slow stretch, a broken walk-in or bad weather at one location won't sink the whole operation.
Case in point: Some of Denver's best-known restaurateurs are scaling up fast.
- Olive & Finch founder Mary Nguyen built a hospitality company spanning restaurants, wholesale and management arms. She told the Denver Business Journal that diversity gives her more buying power and control over production and distribution — helping keep menu prices in check.
- Johnny and Kasie Curiel turned Alma Fonda Fina, which opened in late 2023, into the six-concept Fonda Fina Hospitality group, now including Mezcaleria Alma, Alteño and the newly opened Milpero.
The big picture: "The current economics of operating a restaurant increasingly favor companies with several locations over the truly independent, single-location restaurant," Mickelsen says.
- Restaurant expenses are up 36% since 2019, and 42% of operators said they weren't profitable last year, according to a recent National Restaurant Association report.
The bottom line: Scaling isn't cheap — but increasingly, neither is staying small.