We’ve been invited to share our success story with the history of our company, dating back to the purchase of our original location in Parker, Colorado “The Parker Garage“.
Parker Garage and Foraged Restaurants - Boom to Shutdown
We took on this project as re-hab of an old building on Mainstreet in Parker in 2014. We bought an older rundown business called the Warhorse that had been in business for many years and had the test of time wear on it. We were inspired by the history of the building and the effort to bring it back to its original historic appearance. When we took possession of the building and we had budgeted $500,000 to bring it back to life, we ended up spending $1.1 Million as the condition of the space was too dilapidated. Parker Garage opened after 9 months of construction began in October of 2014 and had many years of increased sales and success. Since 2014, the annual sales increased yearly and by end 2019, we were doing over 2.5 million in annual sales, and growing rapidly.
This motivated us to pursue another location in Denver at 1825 Blake St. in a development called the Dairy Block. We formed a new entity called Foraged Restaurant that is a play on words of Japanese knife making and the creative pursuit of products from around the world. We were only open for (3) three months when the Pandemic struck the world and forced us to shut down both locations and only able to do take-out food service, for a few months during both closures.
Navigating COVID Relief with the SBDC
East Colorado Small Business Development Center’s, Craig Curl, has been a reliable resource for years. He was instrumental in helping us navigate through all the options for PPP loans and EIDL applications, which helped us survive this challenging year.
Needless to say, his efforts and resources that he deployed to aid us was such a guiding light in a very tricky and at many times overwhelming situation. Without his help I am sure we would have struggled to survive and potentially would have lost all of our investment and employees. Mr. Curl stayed in constant contact and updated me sometimes hourly on the ongoing changes that were occurring to ensure we understood how to appropriate the funds and keep our employees engaged while working through the recovery of both businesses.
I am proud to say we have come out on the other side so far and are striving to secure another wave of funding so we can continue to employee 30 people and grow back the base of customers as the world recovers as well. Many thanks to Craig and the SBDC team as they should be honored and acknowledged for their efforts to so many businesses that I am sure would all sing the same praises.
