Cuban bakery opening in Curtis park after closing the rivers and roads

Michael Keen’s rivers and roads have led to closing his café Curtis Park.

But his friend Mike Solis will bring the Cuban Bakery Café very to 2960 Champa St. in his place.

“It is a kind of sweet blessing that we create our friends with their first brick and mortar,” said Keen. “But we are quite sad about it.”

Keen and Wife Desiree opened rivers and original roads eight years ago at 2539, avenue Bruce Randolph in the Denver district.

They added the 500 square feet coffee to Curtis Park about three years ago, but Keen said he knew he needed a change per year.

They experienced the model to grasp – different hours, menus, endowment configurations – but this has never seen the success of the original location. Michael Keen said he had never been profitable during his race and that even a handful of times during the peak summer months.

“It is a very difficult period to operate in the city of Denver at the moment, and we have subsidized it through the other location,” said Michael Keen. “This could never make the amount of cases that would justify labor costs.”

In Clayton, Rivers and Roads offers breakfast and lunch prepared in his kitchen on site, which Michael Keen directs. Having food and space so that people sit down and work is a major reason for which he has made $ 1.5 million in sales each of the last two years.

This has given way to daily return customers, which, according to him, was not possible in the small place of Curtis Park. And having to pay the staff to manage it rather than being there has also not helped the store of the store.

“We had the idea that it would act like a coffee cart with a permanent house, a pastry and coffee service,” said Michael Keen.

But he and solis are optimistic that coffee very, which should open at the end of summer or early fall, will get better with this model.

Solis sells its pastelitos – a Cuban puff pastry which results in “Little Pies” – in some stores around Denver, such as Little Owl Coffee in Lohi and City Park Farmers Market. In Curtis Park, the sweet and salty specialties will be served alongside Cuban coffee drinks as a colada, a sugary espresso stroke.

Solis said that the best -selling pastelitos are Carne, his favorite, and the guava and cheese. He plans to have about six pastries flavors every day.

“When you make pop-ups, it seems that it is a parallel concert,” Solis, who built a career in advertising before spending full time on Café Tres.

“With the next step, I’m a baker and that’s what I am,” he said laughing.