Andrew Dana has a little deli with big plans in Platt Park and RiNo.
“I wish I could tell you we had a more sophisticated process, but it’s as simple as my wife and I lived out in Denver last summer when we opened Tennyson and went to the farmers market on South Pearl, and I said, ‘Oh my God, this place is amazing,’” said Dana, co-founder of Call Your Mother Deli.
Dana is debuting a “Lil’ Deli” — a food truck — at 567 E. Louisiana Ave. in Platt Park on Monday, and hopes to do the same in RiNo in October.
“If you picture a little mini house that somebody would move into off the grid, that’s exactly what this is,” Dana said. “It’s a company in Florida that makes mini houses, and we just ask them to make one into sort of a full kitchen.”
The food trucks, which Dana said cost between $75,000 to $150,000, act as “scouts” for the business, testing out a neighborhood before committing to a full-fledged store. The truck at the Platt Park location, for example, was recently used to launch a location in McLean, Virginia.
Besides the use of a food truck, not much else will be different about the Lil’ Deli concept compared to regular Call Your Mother stores. They will be open the same hours, 7 a.m. to 2 p.m. weekdays and 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. weekends, and have the same menu, just without espresso drinks. A store manager at the site Friday told BusinessDen that the truck has one oven and shoots to complete all orders within 10 minutes.
The D.C. bagel chain, founded in 2018, has expanded quickly in the Denver market, opening three brick-and-mortar locations in Hilltop, Cap Hill and Berkeley since May 2023.
Dana noted that the 567 E. Louisiana Ave. property, which used to have a 7-Eleven on it, is owned by Denver-based Kentro Group, which is also Call Your Mother’s landlord in Cap Hill.
“The idea is we partner with them again, and if it works, hopefully whenever they do their next building, they’ll keep us in mind for a permanent location,” Dana said.
The Kentro Group has submitted plans to the city to build a nearly 200,000-square-foot apartment complex with retail space on about half the block along Pearl Street between Louisiana and Arizona avenues.
While the Platt Park spot is welcoming customers for the first time Monday, Dana is still figuring out the details for the next Lil’ Deli location in RiNo.
“We thought we had a spot,” Dana said. “Now, it looks like we’re gonna have to move two blocks down, but we’re triangulating and coming up with the final solution. So RiNo will happen. It’s just depending on exactly where.”
Dana declined to disclose an exact RiNo address, but said it will be within a few blocks of the Denver Central Market food hall at 2669 Larimer St.
Further down the road, more expansion is on the mind for Dana and his bagel business.
“We want to expand into the burbs,” he said. “We want to expand into other cool neighborhoods. It’s not like we have an exact neighborhood that we want to go into next. We’re really driven by: what does the building look like? Where is it? So we’re constantly looking and hope to find some other cool locations and continue to grow out in Colorado.”
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