After 95 years solo, one of the Denver region’s oldest donut shops is adding a second location.
Tasty Donuts, which opened in what is now Commerce City in 1929, has leased 1,600 square feet in the South Lowry Marketplace shopping center at 7150 Leetsdale Drive in Denver.
“This place is going to be a good testing ground for us because even though it’s a modern building, it’s not gonna look new and trendy,” said Tasty Donuts owner Maynor Ventura.
“The idea,” he added,” is to bring the same flavor wherever we are.”
The space used to be a Dairy Queen. Axio Commercial Real Estate brokers Brian Frank and John Livaditis represented the landlord. Zahra Behfar of Equity Colorado represented the tenant.
Ventura, who purchased the business in 2019, hopes to create a similar feel for the original shop near the intersection of Highway 2 and 72nd Avenue. He plans to install replica signage both inside and out, as well as the signature red striped awning over the service counter.
He hopes to open his doors in February, but that depends on the permit and remodeling process.
The other key question is equipment. Ventura plans to buy mostly older machines, but those may be harder to source. That likely means that, in the early stages of opening, Ventura will have to shuffle the donuts from the original location in the wee hours of the morning so product will be ready to serve at the 5 a.m. open.
“Everything was so much simpler back then,” he said, referencing a mixer that has been with Tasty Donuts since the 1960s. He said it works better than any new equipment he owns, and he doesn’t want his locations to deviate at all.
“Same product. Same time,” he said.
Fortunately, renovations and wait times are nothing new for Tasty Donuts.
When Ventura, 57, bought the store five years ago, he aimed to revitalize a business he said was “going downhill.” There were two families who owned it before, he said — one from its inception through the 1980s and other up until he bought it. Between tattered signage, rotting wood and ripped awning, there was much to do to save a shop he said would have likely disappeared.
Over the last five years, Ventura restored the storefront and menu board. He put up black-and-white pictures of old Commerce City he got from the town’s historical society. The display counter, tables and chairs, though still from the 1960s, got a face-lift too.
“Some of my business friends said I should buy all new stuff,” he said, acknowledging that would’ve been cheaper. For him, though, it was more about reinstilling the value of a place he called a “centerpoint in the community.”
“It took a lot of effort, but I had to do it,” Ventura said.
But one thing didn’t need to change when Ventura took over.
“The donuts were still good,” he said.
The shop uses the same recipe it did in 1929, which Ventura learned through a donut-making bootcamp with the previous owners. It was a grueling, months-long process filled with many late nights, he said.
“At most places it’s just fried dough with sugar on top,” he said. “Not us. Our donuts are good from inside-out.”
There were zero employees when he took over. Now there are six — four full-time.
This is the first restaurant venture for Ventura, who is Guatemalan. His parents owned a bakery in Guatemala when he was growing up, and he credits his mother for his entrepreneurial mindset. Ventura worked in the store helping his parents bake and, later on, manage the money.
Ventura moved to Los Angeles in the early 1980s, where he owned a laundromat with his brother. But after he visited Vail for a ski trip in 1999, he knew where he wanted to be.
“When I got back home I just packed up all my stuff and went back out there,” he said.
He worked at the ski resort for a year before joining the management team at Kroger. He left for a similar position at Safeway years later, but he always had his mind on something bigger. In the last few years there, he kept telling his bosses the same thing.
“My time is coming,” he said. “As soon as I find a business (to buy), I’m out.”
In 2004, he and his wife moved to Commerce City. They frequented Tasty Donuts, and the store stood out to Ventura for its community ties and history.
If he decides to expand Tasty Donuts, which he said is “part of the dream,” he wants to do it in a way that honors the original store.
A couple who recently moved from Commerce City to Arvada has been pleading with Ventura to open a location there. He said they’ve been texting and calling him almost weekly, even sending real estate listings.
“That’s something I need to do soon,” referencing visiting a former firehouse.
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