Brunching is back in Denver, and it’s the best way to spend a weekend

You might have noticed that Denver is a bit of a brunch town. On weekends, especially, the Bloodys flow like water, pancake orders rise like the mountains, and wait times, well … we hope you don’t have anywhere to be.

For whatever reason, two separate entities decided to rank U.S. cities by their fondness for brunch, and guess what? Denver made the Top 10 on both lists.

So if it seems like you’re seeing a lot of tables full of French toast and scrambled eggs on the weekends, it could be because we have 11 brunch restaurants per 100,000 residents, compared to the national average of just seven.

And more and more are popping up. In the past few months, Cattivella, Federales, Rewild, Modis in the City, The Original, Blanco, La Bouche and Three Saints Revival all launched brand-new brunch services. Safta, Jill’s Restaurant and the Wynkoop Brewing Company brought theirs back post-pandemic. Brunch is most definitely booming.

“When we launched the Rewild brunch menu on the weekends, that flipped our program on its side, and people are really loving it,” said Kelly Campbell, co-owner of Nurture, which houses the new Rewild restaurant. “We’ve seen our weekend sales double (with the new brunch), and on a couple days, triple.”

Rewild debuted inside Nurture, a Highland wellness hub, in June. Nurture already had a daytime café, Nest, which focused on juices and smoothie bowls, but Rewild brought the sort of indulgent dishes you expect from a weekend brunch, like Benedicts and a bison short rib hash, as well as all the mimosas, micheladas and a.m. cocktails that go along with them.

“People are loyal to their brunch here,” Campbell said. “I think brunch is Denver’s way of commemorating that the weekend has arrived. It’s like a ritual, and who doesn’t love a ritual?”

But brunch wasn’t always this big. In Denver’s P.S. (Pre-Snooze) days, there were the first-name legends we know on a first-name basis, like Lucile’s, Annie’s, and Sam’s — there just weren’t many of them. And what there were tended to be open earlier, more breakfast-y than brunch-y.

Those hours are important in differentiating breakfast from brunch — if a.m. meals were a mullet, breakfast would be the business up front and brunch the party in the back — as are the types of foods people tend to order and the amount they drink.

“You get breakfast at Denny’s, but you get brunch with your mimosas and your Bloody Marys. That’s the unofficial definition of brunch,” said Jelly Café owner Josh Epps. “Over the past decade or so, Denver’s brunch scene has definitely become more competitive. It started off with us, Snooze, Lucile’s. Now you’re getting big chef-type people in the game too … Why has it gotten bigger? Denver’s always been a big drinking city, I don’t know if people were just waiting on the okay to catch a buzz at 10:30 in the morning.”

Many argue that Snooze gave Denverites that go-ahead on day drinking and pancake flights when it opened in 2006 at Park and Larimer. In the decade and a half since, it’s grown from 14 employees at that original restaurant to nearly 2,500 workers across 52 locations in nine states. It’s a downright brunch behemoth, but it’s not our only brunchy chain.

The Urban Egg opened in Colorado Springs 20 years ago, and it’s since grown to nine locations, including their first foray out of state, in Kansas City. Last summer, they opened their second restaurant in the Denver area, in Cherry Creek North, and, according to founder Randy Price, it’s been going very, very well.

“It’s one of our top performing stores, even though it’s our smallest footprint,” Price said. “That store really took off from the beginning. Denver is such a great market — there are so many outstanding restaurants and foodies in the area. We definitely plan to expand further.”

At the Cherry Creek Urban Egg, Price said that over-the-top dishes like jumbo lump crab Benedict, cinnamon swirl pancakes, and a Pueblo chile hot chicken benny have been flying out of the kitchen, and aperol spritzes and pineapple mimosas have been flying out of the bar.

Many restaurant owners said that the people showing up to all these new brunch services match Denver’s changing demographics: younger, with more money to spend. And they’re more likely to have their eggs with a side of a Bloody Mary or mimosa. (Or two or three.)

Sam Armatas, owner of Sam’s No. 3, said the biggest change he’s noticed since he took over the family business in 1998 is the increased alcohol consumption. Sam’s has always had a liquor license, but the bar has expanded from housing a single well vodka to a wider range of choices.

“Alcohol sales have increased dramatically over the last seven years, and especially since COVID, everyone is drinking more,” he said. “We had to evolve with it by coming up with different ways to sell a mimosa. New names, new Bloodys. People want to go out and they don’t want basic. We put every vegetable we can in our Bloodys, plus bacon. And we put acai berries and blueberries instead of basic mimosas.”

Another COVID-induced change is brunch to-go. What started as a necessity during the mandated closures, takeout continues to thrive at many breakfast and brunch restaurants. “To-go expanded and it hasn’t stopped,” Jelly’s Ebbs said. “Even though we’re full-time open now, people are still ordering to-go. You get to skip the line, get the same food, and eat at home.”

And just what are we eating most? In spite of all of our brunchy options, it’s the traditional bacon and eggs meal, along with breakfast burritos, that remains the top seller at most restaurants. While the basics may not fluctuate too much, our other preferences do. Armatas has changed the menu at Sam’s throughout the years to coincide with dietary trends.

For a while it was the low-carb, Atkins-type stuff that sold like, ironically, hot cakes. Then gluten-free got big so they took the flour out of their green chile, and now they’re adding more plant-based items, like plant-based chorizo and sausages. “We’ve had to expand our menu, which is absurd to say since it’s a 16-page menu,” he said.

Also since COVID, Central Park’s Four Friends Kitchen co-owner Genefer Thornton has noticed the rise of the weekday brunch. With many people still working from home, especially in more suburban spots, they’re more likely to treat themselves to a Wednesday brunch. Thornton says that they sell four to five times as many breakfast/brunch items as straight lunch dishes, even during the week. “Brunch used to be huge on the weekends and more lunch during the week, but now it’s evening out,” she said.

Meaning that yes, as hard as it is to believe, brunch could be becoming even bigger in Denver post-COVID. Because why limit the joys of ridiculously excessive pancakes and spiked OJ to the weekends? Denver’s future is looking just brunchy

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