There are ways to get customers to come to your business — and ways to keep them out. What do you want with your espresso? Bikinis or Broncos?
Donna DeVine just opened Twin Perks at 1628 N. Federal Blvd., a latte’s throw from Invesco Field at Mile High. It’s a tiny coffee kiosk that is completely staffed by young women in bikinis.
I drove out there Sunday to confirm DeVine’s claims — and sure enough, there was Amanda Soto behind the counter in a bikini and a pierced navel.
“Espresso & Bikinis” read the sign, along with “Twin Perks Espresso” and “Bikini Girl Drive-Thru.”
“It’s been really busy,” says Soto, a student at Johnson & Wales University studying culinary arts. She’s on a scholarship after being crowned Second Best Teen Chef in America.
Isn’t it a tad cold in there?
“I love working in a bikini,” she said. “It feels like summer, my favorite season.”
I told owner DeVine that bikini espresso shops have raised some local ire in the past, like Perky Cups in Aurora in 2009, since closed.
“I am 43 with five daughters,” says DeVine. “This business is by women for women. No one is going to be standing outside of the kiosk in a bikini. Our motto is ‘Clean and classy, not cheap and trashy.’ “
Meanwhile, a newspaper colleague posted on Facebook that a coffee kiosk in the mall parking lot at East Hampden Avenue and South Yosemite Street had a white papier- mâche horse wearing a Broncos jersey propped up along Hampden directing traffic to his shop. He took it down last week and replaced with with a cardboard arrow. He told my reporter friend Rob Reuteman that he thought the Broncos jersey was “deterring business.” I went by the kiosk Sunday, which was closed for the day, with no Broncos paraphernalia in sight.
Lauren.
Lauren Bush grew up in Denver, where she attended Graland Country Day through the third grade. She’s the daughter of now divorced parents, Neil and Sharon Bush. She became a model at 14 — and a beautiful one. She has a good pedigree: an uncle and Grandpa were president, she’s been on the cover of Vanity Fair and Vogue, she graduated from Princeton, and there was much gossip about e-mails between her and Britain’s Prince William. Now at 26, she’s engaged to Ralph Lauren’s son, David.
He’s 14 years older and part of America’s First Family of Fashion. But the best part is that she’ll become Lauren Lauren.
Once in love with Amy.
Castle Rock stunner Amy Adams, who appeared in local dinner theater and family friendly Disney fare like “Enchanted,” is out to change her image, especially in her new flick, “The Fighter.” She’s provocatively posed on the cover of Marie Claire magazine with the declaration, “The world thinks I’m so innocent, but it’s not true.” Inside, she tells even more.
City spirit.
Ringo Starr has listed his house in Woody Creek near Aspen for $4.5 million. It’s a modest 3,200- square-foot pad sitting next to the Roaring Fork River. . . . Sez who: “This bikini made me a success.” Ursula Andress
Bill Husted’s column appears Sunday, Tuesday and Friday. You can reach him at 303-954-1486 or at bhusted@denverpost.com. Take a peek at Husted’s next column at /husted.
