When the Denver native and his longtime friends Matt Reiswig and Kristin Reiswig were traveling in South America last fall, Hyatt recalled an afternoon when their phones were at “dangerously low” battery.

“It was midway through the day, and we noticed a sign outside of a cafe that said, ‘Charge cell here,’” the now-45-year-old said. “And we found something we’d never seen before.”

When they walked in, they saw a kiosk with a QR code affixed to it that dispensed portable phone chargers. The trio paid for the batteries, plugged their phones in and went to a nearby restaurant to grab lunch and some drinks. At another nearby kiosk, they dropped the chargers back off.

“It����ap almost like renting a scooter,” said Hyatt, who is the CEO of a private equity firm and also runs an event business. He was raised in Aurora and got his MBA from Metropolitan State University.

By February of this year, he and the Reiswigs started a similar outfit in Denver. Since then, they’ve helped charge phones in 25 bars and clubs around the city, like The Church and Charlie’s off Colfax.

Instead of building out their own machines, the three, who operate under the name Massive Technology, are the biggest local distributors for ChargerGoGo. That business got its start in 2020 in Las Vegas, Nevada, and has since grown to have 6,000 stations across the country, it says.

“When we kicked this thing off, there were maybe a dozen or so machines around the Front Range,” Hyatt noted, explaining that the deal with the Nevada-based company isn’t exclusive. “But otherwise it����ap pretty new territory. We’ve quickly become the largest and fastest growing distributor in Denver.”

Customers download the ChargerGoGo app and pay $6 for an hour of juice. Each additional 60 minutes of the fast-speed charging costs $2, and the average rental time so far has been 46 minutes.

And if clubbers accidentally leave the battery in their pocket or purse, it����ap an extra $15 per day it goes unreturned. They can also buy one outright for $45, Hyatt said. He’ll go out and replace chargers with new ones if they aren’t returned.

“You can go out and have a smoke, hit the next bar and then return it the next day if you’re stumbling home,” he added. “We make money either way. We don’t care if they return it or not.”

As for the machines, Massive Technology buys them outright before placing them, which are free of charge to the clubs and bars they sit in. Hyatt said he pays around $1,200 per kiosk, which holds eight chargers. Some places have multiple kiosks throughout their space.

He’s also bought a larger, 32-battery system that runs $5,500, which sits in Club Vinyl at 11th and Broadway. His group hasn’t taken on any investors and it has paid $30,000 to get the business up and running.

One of Hyatt����ap smaller machines, which are the dominant type he buys. (Courtesy Massive Technology)
Hyatt said his revenue has doubled every month since starting in February, mainly through better signage and advertising on the kiosk’s screens. Eight of his 27 machines have been paid off so far.

He’s also eyeing mountain town restaurants and bars next for his machines to make up for the slower winter nightlife around Denver. He said healthcare and hotels are ripe for ChargerGoGos.

“First and foremost, it����ap a free amenity to bars,” Hyatt said. “So it����ap really easy for a bar owner to say, “Yeah, let����ap place it. Let����ap try it. And if we like it and our people love it, we can keep going from there.”

So far, that����ap been bearing out at Jaguar Room, at 1941 Market St. Lindsay Law, the general manager, called having Hyatt����ap machines a “no-brainer.”

Her staff would routinely be asked over 50 times a night to charge people’s phones behind the counter. Having four stations across the multi-floor club gives her an easy thing to point to.

“We don’t like holding onto people’s property, all the way down to jackets,” she said.

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, located at 2990 Larimer St., recently announced its plans to close, but didn’t offer a specific date. Rather, the company said that it would host “as much shenanigans as we can fit into 3-4 months of wind down it will take for this unfortunate reality.”

No one from the distillery was available to discuss the circumstances of the closure. But the social media post lamented The Block’s “timing” and broader trends in the spirits industry. “The industry is in the dumps,” the post said.

Owners Kraig Weaver, Michelle Weaver and Kameron Weaver opened The Block Distilling in late 2017. Brothers Kraig and Kameron are both alumni of the Colorado School of Mines and began making gin at home, enticed by the chemistry involved in distillation and fermentation.

Kraig also happened to be living in a residence above where The Block now resides when he found out the space would be coming available for lease. The brothers jumped at the opportunity to start their own distillery.

In the years since, The Block has carved out a niche for itself by not only making familiar spirits like gin and whiskey, but also more interesting ones that many fans purchased through a bottle club. Things like pear brandy, coffee liqueur and various amaros made the seasonally-rotating cocktail menu at its onsite taproom worth seeking out. Its square glass bottles were immediately recognizable on store shelves.

In 2024, The Denver Post named The Block Distilling one of the hottest places to drink in Colorado because of both the drinks and the atmosphere, which offered a welcome level of sophistication among the River North Arts District scene.

“We sincerely cannot compliment you nor express our gratitude for the way you have shown up, brought your chosen and blood family, and been part of the community that formed around The Block,” the company said in its closing announcement, promising bottle discounts and one-off releases to come.

“We want to share our knowledge, our customs and our culture,” Vallarino told BusinessDen. “We’re not just burritos and tequila.”

The three will open Terruño Ancestral Spirits in the LoDo space later this month, showcasing spirits from their native Mexico along with traditional dishes beyond the Tex-Mex style that has become commonplace in the states.

Castillo, along with Vallarino and Salgado, who are married, have been distributing tequilas, mezcals and lesser-known Mexican spirits like raicilla and sotol together for the last three years. They supply restaurants and bars across the state and hold events to teach their clients about the drinks, how they’re made and the farmers that make them.

At the time, Salgado also started experimenting with making his own cocktails, many of which will be served at Terruño.

“And that����ap when we were like ‘we should get a place to do this,’” Vallarino said.

At Terruño, which is Spanish for terroir, they’ll have hundreds of spirits to choose from, along with beer, whiskey, vodka, gin and other liquors. Most will be sourced from farmers in Mexico, while the rest will be made by local distilleries, breweries and the like.

They’ll keep up their educational sessions several times a month, they said, even inviting farmers from Mexico to come to Colorado and talk about how they make their product. Vallarino also mentioned they’ll do a similar thing with Mexican chefs to feature cuisines from different parts of the country.

“The principal idea with all of this is to give help to the producers in Mexico,” Vallarino said, noting they work with small and medium-sized brands only. “They know they are getting a fair price from us for their products.”

The restaurant will be open from 11 a.m. to 11 p.m., offering foods from around central Mexico with recommendations for spirit pairings. There will also be a grab-and-go café serving coffees, energy drinks and Mexican pastries from 7 a.m. through 1 p.m.

“We will have no waiters, only guides sharing with you and exploring the history behind every drink and cocktail,” Vallarino said.

Vallarino and Salgado, along with their two boys, moved to Colorado in 2019 after spending all their lives in Mexico City, where Salgado had an importing business. But after facing threats from gangs, they decided to leave their home country.

They became importers of Mexican candies and other small goods, which is how they met Castillo. She had a similar business during that time, after decades as an accountant in the U.S., where she’s been since leaving Mexico in 2000. The three joined up and pivoted to alcohol three years ago, a business they will still keep while running the restaurant.

They found the home for Terruño while delivering spirits to one of their accounts a few doors down, D’Corazon Mexican Restaurant.

The space — formerly home to Honor Farm, a haunted house-themed bar that closed at the end of last year — was being marketed by Zach Cytryn of Axio Commercial Real Estate, who set up a tour just days later.

In May, Terruño locked down a 10-year lease for the space, which they only had to make cosmetic changes to. It����ap had a bar in it for over a century, Salgado said, and also used to be a hostel.

“Something told us we should be here,” Vallarino said. “It����ap everything we were building in our minds.”

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The proposal was part of a broader ordinance, which the council did approve, to update and simplify the city’s licensing process for businesses such as nightclubs, venues and strip clubs.

The city’s Department of Licensing and Consumer Protection released a draft of the proposed changes, including the possible extension of nightlife, earlier this year. The change would have allowed clubs to remain open until 4 a.m., but under state law, alcohol would have continued to be sold only until 2 a.m.

DLCP Executive Director Molly Depluchian said during the meeting that the department had hoped the later let-out time could decrease violent incidents late at night.

“What results is a competition of resources, for a ride home, to find some food. People are at their peak intoxication, and so they run into each other, bump into each other and there ends up being some fights,” she said.

Councilwoman Jamie Torres proposed the amendment to remove the 4 a.m. element from the bill but said she would be interested in seeing a limited pilot program of the idea in certain parts of the city.

“This was one that I could not get entirely comfortable with,” she said. “I think we are not quite there yet on data that demonstrates that things get safer with a later exit time.”

Duplechain said the department would explore a possible pilot program.

The council approved Torres’ amendment 12-1 with Councilwoman Sarah Parady casting the sole “no” vote. The council went on to approve the remainder of the ordinance with a 12-to-1 vote, with Councilwoman Flor Alvidrez as the only dissenting vote. Alvidrez said she has heard from businesses who are concerned the new rules will add new liability for them.

The rest of the ordinance is focused on updating the licenses for the first time since the 1980s. That included reducing the license types from 14 to three. The ordinance also adds safety requirements for clubs to follow, eliminates licensing requirements for some businesses and eliminates mandatory hearings for club licenses.

The three license types are for adult entertainment, nightclub entertainment for businesses with a capacity of at least 100 people and a limited entertainment license for smaller businesses that have live entertainment, a dance floor or target sports.

The council delayed the vote in July after a deadly shooting at a nightclub in southeast Denver. The shooting at Ultra Lounge East — which has since permanently closed after DLCP suspended the club’s licenses — left one person dead and eight injured.

The safety requirements in the bill include prohibiting weapons, requiring businesses to develop “safety and security plans,” mandating surveillance cameras and record keeping. An earlier version of the bill would have also required nightclubs to have security guards.

The new rules also require businesses to take “reasonable measures” to prevent “disorderly conduct” inside their facility, in any admittance lines and within 25 feet of their entrances and exits.

It will also require that all managers and club owners undergo a background check.

The state is home to some seriously old drinking establishments, several of which predate Colorado’s official statehood in 1876. And if those walls could talk, they’d tell of days operating as bordellos and speakeasies, of miners and notable names who visited, and yes, even of some shootouts that took place there.

When local historian Rick Gardner thinks about the oldest bars in Colorado, he usually thinks of three: The Buffalo Rose in Golden, an institution that originally opened under a different name in 1859 and has operated in some form or fashion ever since; the Peck House in Empire, which is the oldest physical building in Colorado, built in 1862, that was home to a saloon; and Denver’s Buckhorn Exchange, which opened in 1893 and acquired the state’s first liquor license post-Prohibition.

While all respectable in their own right, there are additional haunts along and beyond the Front Range still serving cold ones today — and some are said to be just that, haunted.

Here’s a toast to 11 of the oldest bars in Colorado.

The Buffalo Rose Saloon (Golden)

Located in the heart of downtown Golden, the buildings that house events complex have roots that are as old as the city itself. The spot where the restaurant resides originally opened in 1859 as The International Bowling Saloon, so-named for Golden’s first sport, which was not done inside but out on the back lawn with three 70-foot lanes. Shortly after opening, the site saw two shootouts, in 1860 and 1868, respectively. The saloon underwent construction over subsequent decades as the area grew; the joint has been called The Buffalo Rose since 1981. Today, the business includes several additional historic buildings that comprise The Buffalo Rose Events Center, which is used for concerts and private parties. Each one has its own unique history worth celebrating. Perhaps most notable this year is the Golden Plunge indoor swimming pool, which was originally constructed around 1926 and still resides under the venue’s floor, empty of water of course.

The Gold Pan Saloon (Breckenridge)

When it debuted in 1861, the then-called Long’s Saloon was effectively a tent serving residents in the mining town of Breckenridge. The bar moved into a building in 1879, but it����ap unclear exactly when its name changed to . At times a speakeasy and a brothel, the bar used to have tunnels under the building that ran to the local courthouse. General manager Chris Butler says their purpose remains murky, but local lore is that they helped obscure high-ranking officials visiting for booze or perhaps other attractions in the rooms upstairs. Today, The Gold Pan Saloon also serves as a tasting room for Colorado’s own .

The Mint Steakhouse (Silverthorne)

Opened in 1862, has survived many years as well as many moves. The bar was originally located in a mining village known as Kokomo (in present-day Leadville) under the moniker Jack Ryan’s Saloon. It was moved to both Frisco and Dillon before landing in its current home in Silverthorne sometime before 1961, as the Denver Water Board made way for . The Mint was at one time a bordello with six rooms upstairs, according to co-owner Tom Ricci, who purchased the business in 1984. During a remodel that year, a local woman on horseback stopped by to tell the new owners of the times she spent visiting The Mint with her father and visiting with “the girls” upstairs. “My wife asked her what she meant by the girls. She winked and said, ‘Missy, you know what I mean!’” Ricci recounted. Today, The Mint is known as a popular steakhouse.

My Brother’s Bar (Denver)

Located in Denver’s Highland neighborhood, is famously regarded as the longest continually operating bar in the Mile High City. Originally called Highland House, the bar opened in 1873 and has been slinging beers in a no-frills atmosphere ever since. Its name changed many times, but it became My Brother’s Bar around 1970 after siblings Jim and Angelo Karagas purchased the business. Known as a hangout for Beat writers Jack Kerouac, Neal Cassady and Allen Ginsberg, it����ap endured as a favorite among locals for never having a sign or TVs and for only playing classical music.

The Silver Dollar Saloon (Leadville)

Step inside Leadville’s and you join the ranks of legends like Doc Holliday, The Unsinkable Molly Brown and playwright/poet Oscar Wilde, who are said to have visited in the time since it opened in 1879. Originally called the Board of Trade, the bar had many names, going by M&O Saloon around the turn of the 20th century and then The Silver Dollar Saloon sometime in the 1930s, said CEO Eric Johns, whose family has owned it since 1943. He credits the bar’s longevity to its, shall we say, adaptability. “We operated as a speakeasy during Prohibition and again discreetly as a speakeasy during COVID,” Johns said.

Ace Hi Tavern (Golden)

When it opened in 1879, the spot now known as in Golden was home to the Opera House Restaurant, serving patrons who attended the Golden Opera House. Unlike the bars on this list, however, the restaurant never served alcohol until after Prohibition ended. Throughout its history, the restaurant had more than 20 owners, Gardner said, the latest being in 1961, when it became Ace Hi Tavern, the now well-loved downtown dive.

J-Bar (Aspen)

Aspen’s Hotel Jerome and its signature date back to 1889, when the town was a hotspot for silver mining. During Prohibition, J-Bar took the unique approach of converting into a soda fountain instead of a speakeasy. But locals could still come by and sneakily catch a buzz by ordering the “Aspen Crud,” a vanilla milkshake that came spiked with bourbon. Guests can still order the cocktail today.

The Creede Hotel & Restaurant (Creede)

Originally known as Zang’s Hotel, has been serving locals since it opened in 1892, the same year Creede was officially incorporated as a town. In addition to serving famous faces like actors John Wayne and Johnny Depp, the hotel is notoriously host to paranormal activity. Guests and staff have reportedly heard footsteps in empty hallways, seen glassware moving and doors slamming on their own, or experienced lights acting unusually. One recurring story involves a woman in period clothing being seen briefly in hallways or near staircases. Perhaps the spirits missed last call?

Monaghan’s Bar and Grill (Denver)

When founder Roy Monaghan decided to open a bar, he wanted to do so near Fort Logan, south of Denver, to be able to serve the soldiers there. And so Monaghan’s Saloon was born in 1892 in a wooden building, which was upgraded in 1901 to the brick structure the bar and grill currently calls home. Even after the Fort Logan base closed post-World War II, Monaghan’s continued serving locals. It����ap rumored patrons included President Dwight Eisenhower and Alfred (sometimes spelled Alferd) Packer, known as the “Colorado Cannibal.”

The Buckhorn Exchange (Denver)

has been proudly serving Denverites since 1893, when Henry H. “Shorty Scout” Zietz opened a saloon that catered to railroaders working across Osage Street at the Burnham Yards of the Denver & Rio Grande Railroad. (That����ap why the spot was originally named the Rio Grande Exchange.) Famously, the restaurant obtained the first liquor license issued in Colorado post-Prohibition for $25. It is still displayed in the bar. The menu here harkens back to the Old West with a focus on wild game.

The New Sheridan Bar (Telluride)

Telluride’s original New Sheridan Hotel was built in 1891, only to be destroyed by a fire two years later. When it was rebuilt in 1895, it included the New Sheridan Bar to serve residents of the bustling mining town. Much of the aesthetic remains intact more than 100 years later, including the original wooden bar imported from Austria. Rumor has it that the bar utilized secret underground tunnels below the building during Prohibition so people could still get their fix. Locals affectionately call this watering hole “the old bar,” given its long history. Belly up and try the city of Telluride’s signature libation, the Flatliner, when you go.

On Monday, the CEO of LoHi’s Recess Beer Garden announced he is adding a location in the Tivoli Student Union on the Auraria Campus in time for the fall semester.

“It came fast,” Romero said.

“Like a lot of good business deals, it����ap all about who you know! We were introduced to the Auraria team by a mutual friend who saw the potential in this partnership,” he later added via email.

Recess has operated in LoHi since 2015. In March, Romero told BusinessDen he was adding another Recess location in Denver’s Virginia Village neighborhood. That spot is slated to open later this year or early in 2027, he said.

Details of the Tivoli space, like menu items and its hours, are still being ironed out. The bar and eatery, known for its smashburgers, will occupy the former Tivoli Brewing Co./Quad Side Tavern space.

Tivoli Brewing stopped making beer on campus in 2023 and closed the following year after a decadelong run. It was replaced briefly by Quad Side Tavern, which appears to have quietly shuttered sometime after the spring semester ended.

Recess signed a five-year lease for the spot. A copy of the lease obtained by BusinessDen shows the business will not pay a base rent but instead will fork over a portion of its sales. If gross sales for the month top $100,000, Recess will pay 10% of those sales in rent. If gross sales are below $100,000, it will pay 5% of monthly sales.

It will also pay $8.75 per square foot in building expenses for the 5,000-square-foot space. That amounts to $3,600 monthly.

“We are planning on staying true to all the elements that have made Recess successful: good food, great drinks and a fun, energetic place to meet your friends and have a good time,” Romero said.

“Recess Tivoli will have its own unique vibe and community, but it will still be built with the same branding, foundation and core beliefs that Recess LoHi continues to thrive on.”

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“I intentionally kept this under the radar,” he said. “I am irrationally protective of this concept.”

The Denver entrepreneur, best known for founding the bowling alley-meets-restaurant concept Punch Bowl Social, opened BARna at 1201 E. Colfax Ave. on June 17. The 10,000-square-foot bar serves tapas and shows soccer games.

Thompson said it will be a “soccer-first, not soccer-stupid” establishment. Broncos and Nuggets games will be shown, but so will that 9 a.m. Premier League matchup. The restaurant also has a basement filled with private karaoke rooms and unique games like Multiball, which is like a golf simulator but for soccer and dozens of other sports.

“I’m not casting aspersions at other versions of soccer bars, but most of them, the vast majority of them, are just Irish pubs and British pubs, and that is not for this generation. The concepts that I create are always for the 21- to 34-year-old,” said Thompson, 55.

BARna replaces the Irish Snug, an Irish pub and sports bar which closed there in 2022 after 18 years in business. Crazy Horse Kitchen and Bar also briefly operated in the space from 2023 to 2025.

Thompson did look elsewhere before settling on the Irish Snug space. RiNo, he said, had high rents and lacked consistent foot traffic. He also checked out buildings near his original Punch Bowl Social location on South Broadway. But he was insistent that a Colfax location was an ideal launching point.

“I believe in the Colfax renaissance associated with this huge bus rapid transit system,” he said. “It����ap a $280 million investment that can change a lot of opinions and doubts.”

It����ap a fitting metaphor for Thompson, who himself faces some old opinions and doubts about his work that he’d like to change.

In 2012, he launched Punch Bowl Social. At first, it went gangbusters. By 2019, the company was doing $120 million in revenue with nearly 20 locations averaging 24,000 square feet and had received a $140 million investment from Cracker Barrel.

But then the pandemic hit in 2020, plunging the restaurant industry into chaos. Thompson stepped down as CEO in August 2020. The business filed for bankruptcy that December.

The following year, he opened Three Saints Revival, an upscale Mediterranean joint next to Union Station. It closed in 2024, and Thompson was ordered to pay $500,000 to his landlord for breaking the lease. Court records show he has not yet paid that sum.

All the while, he was working as CEO of Camp Pickle. The business launched in 2022, aiming to bring pickleball courts and restaurants under the same roof. It purchased land for a location in Centennial and publicized other future openings elsewhere, but nothing ever materialized. Thompson said he left the company in 2024. Earlier this year, its land in Centennial was foreclosed on.

“I’ve been called an a–hole plenty of times, I recognize that. … No one’s ever called me a cheat, no one’s ever called me a fraud,” he said.

Thompson, who still lives in Denver, said his Union Station restaurant failed because he believed that the pandemic would end sooner and that downtown would quickly rebound, hence the name Three Saints Revival. He noted that the eatery won Westword’s best Mediterranean restaurant title in 2022.

Camp Pickle, meanwhile, was a much larger operation with many investors. Thompson said he was just the face of the brand and received all the flak as a result.

“There’s a discipline when you have to learn to pull the plug on something earlier on,” he said. “It doesn’t matter how long you fight, if you know it����ap not going to work, you don’t get bonus points for the good fight.”

The idea for BARna has percolated in Thompson’s head for years. At first, he flirted with doing something much larger, with soccer fields and a bar under one roof. But he settled on something more intimate.

“It����ap less than half to open up one of these than what it used to cost me to open a Punch Bowl Social,” Thompson said.

Thompson is hoping to open more BARna locations in Denver and around the country. He said Dallas, Texas, and Southern California make sense given the popularity of soccer there. Locally, LoHi’s youthful urban feel and southern Denver’s high concentration of soccer families seem ideal.

He’s 50/50 partners with British investor Luke Johnson, whom Thompson met in his final days at Punch Bowl Social. The two unsuccessfully tried to wrestle control of the business from a lender months before the bankruptcy.

Thompson said he’s operating this business a bit differently. He designed the entire interior himself, down to the color palette. The interior features a hodgepodge of antiques and soccer motifs wrapped in Spanish finishes. A large, ornate arch over the bar is based on a famous market in Barcelona, for instance.

“There’s not a fiber in this place I haven’t touched, and it����ap the first time I’ve done it like that,” he said.

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The spot, which billed itself as the first of its kind in the state, ceased operations on Monday, June 22, in anticipation of a 13,000-square-foot 1up location opening in Lakewood’s Belmar development.

“Our new home will occupy the former Lucky Strike space, at 415 Teller St. in Lakewood, and preserve much of the underground atmosphere that made the original LoDo location so memorable,” the . “It will be the largest 1up Arcade Bar we have ever built and will feature our most extensive collection of arcade games, pinball machines, redemption games, and attractions to date.”

The company decided to close the LoDo location at 1926 Blake St. in Denver, due to “the combination of changing conditions in downtown Denver and the increasing financial pressures facing the hospitality industry made it clear that it was time for the next chapter,” they wrote.

The original 1up opened on March 23, 2011, as the first full-service bar with a large collection of vintage video game cabinets, pinball machines, modest Skee-Ball lanes, and oversized Jenga blocks. A popular stop-off before and after Rockies games, concerts and downtown festivals, its subterranean lair became a reliable draw in a neighborhood otherwise dominated by TV-plastered sports bars and trendy, short-lived nightclubs.

“Today, gaming has become a major part of the hospitality landscape, and while the industry has evolved in countless ways, we are incredibly proud to have helped pioneer that movement here in Colorado,” owners wrote. “While our original location has closed, The 1up Arcade Bar is not going away. Our Colfax, Greenwood Village, and Westminster locations remain open and will continue serving the communities that have supported them for years.”

The closure hits just as two other LoDo businesses shutter, including the Rock Bottom Restaurant & Brewery on 16th and Curtis streets, and Church and Union on 17th Street, one of four restaurants from Jamie Lynch of “Top Chef” fame.

in RiNo and in Five Points are two of the four bars contending for ‘Best New U.S. Cocktail Bar’ at the , the competition announced earlier this month.

That means Denver has a 50% chance of bringing home the title.

The Peach Crease Club, opened last November near Mission Ballroom, serves culinary-inspired drinks in an audiophile-friendly atmosphere. It����ap owned and operated by local powerhouse cocktail couple Alex Jump and Stuart Jensen. Rougarou debuted last August from the creative forces behind Yacht Club, another award-winning Mile High City haunt. The concept is billed as a tribute to the American South.

The other two finalists in the category are schmuck. in New York City and Vandell in Los Angeles. Winners will be announced at an in-person ceremony in New Orleans on July 23.

Started in 2007, the Spirited Awards celebrate “outstanding individuals, establishments, products, media, and leaders who continue to inspire the global cocktail community,” according to the announcement. The competition is part of the renowned , which convenes the world’s leading mixologists every summer.

“As we mark the 20th anniversary of the Spirited Awards, we are proud to recognize this year’s finalists and honorees whose creativity, dedication, and leadership have elevated cocktail culture around the world. Their contributions not only set new standards of excellence but also inspire the next generation of hospitality professionals,” Ryan Chetiyawardana, Spirited Awards International Chair, said in a statement.

Denver is no stranger to the spotlight there. In 2024, the hot dog-slinging dive bar Yacht Club was honored as the Best New U.S. Cocktail Bar. Yacht Club and two other Denver spots, Lady Jane and Semiprecious, were nominated as semifinalists in this year’s competition, as well.

Jump and Jensen of Peach Crease said in a social media post that the recognition was validating, given the work it takes to open a bar in today’s economy and because locals belly up to get more than just drinks.

“Bars have always been community hubs. Serving delicious beverages is only a small factor of what makes a world class bar,” . “We are proud to be a new pillar of community here in Denver alongside many other wonderful establishments that have laid the groundwork before us and continue to do so.”

The business will occupy an area at 3100 Brighton Blvd., next to the property’s office lobby entrance, according to a Wednesday announcement from Boston-based Beacon Capital Partners and Denver-based Elevation Development Group.

The 70- to 80-seat space will feature French influences alongside contemporary design elements.

“Everything I build is rooted in creating spaces that bring people together through thoughtful design, hospitality and atmosphere,” said Masters, founder of Hello Darling and Flora.

“The space at Steel House felt like the right place to create something lasting for the RiNo neighborhood, a place designed for connection, creativity and community throughout the day.”

Steel House was completed in 2025, featuring more than 300,000 square feet of office space and 12,000 square feet of retail space. Developers Beacon and Elevation acquired the land in 2019 and in early 2023.

Designed by Morris Adjmi Architects and Open Studio Architecture, the 12-story building also features a range of amenities, including a 13,000-square-foot outdoor terrace, a tenant lounge, a two-story gym, a rock-climbing wall, an indoor basketball court, a yoga studio, a conference facility for more than 200 people, a bike room with repair stations and outdoor terraces on every floor.

The project has attracted interest from several employers, including Oakland, Calif.-based tech firm Fivetran, which is expected to move into the building by October after signing a nearly 33,000-square-foot lease for a floor at the top of the property.

Additionally, BusinessDen reported late last year that Denver-based hospitality company Alterra Mountain Co. was also eyeing space in the industrial-style building.

The Brighton Boulevard corridor continues to emerge as one of RiNo’s fastest-growing mixed-use districts, according to the announcement.

With more than 7,500 residential units nearby and continued development throughout the corridor, the area is seeing increased demand for hospitality, retail and service-oriented concepts.