Amazon is challenging the structure of the National Labor Relations Board in a lawsuit that also accuses the agency of improperly influencing the outcome of a union election at a company warehouse more than two years ago.

The complaint, filed Thursday at a federal court in San Antonio, mirrors legal arguments the tech giant made in front of the agency earlier this year after NLRB prosecutors accused the company of maintaining policies that made it challenging for workers to organize and retaliating against some who did so.

In the new legal filing, attorneys for Amazon pointed back to a lawsuit the agency filed against the company in March 2022, roughly a week before voting for a union election was set to begin at a company warehouse in the New York borough of Staten Island.

Amazon views the agency’s lawsuit, which sought to force the company to give a union organizer his job back, as improperly influencing the outcome of the election. The company has also cited the action as one of its objections to the historic election, where workers voted in favor of union representation for the first time in the U.S.

Last month, the NLRB’s board denied Amazon’s appeal to review its objections, closing off any options for the company to get the election results overturned within the agency.

In its new complaint, Amazon said the four NLRB board members who authorized the injunction were later judges reviewing the objections that came before them. It argued that structure was unconstitutional because board members are shielded from removal by the president, violates Amazon’s due process rights as well as right to a jury trial.

Other companies, such as Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Trader Joe’s, have also challenged the structure of the agency in pending lawsuits or administrative cases. Kayla Blado, spokesperson for the NLRB General Counsel noted that while big companies have sought to challenge the NLRB, the Supreme Court in 1937 upheld the agency’s constitutionality.

“While the current challenges require the NLRB to expend scarce resources defending against them, we’ve seen that the results of these kinds of challenges is ultimately a delay in justice, but that ultimately justice does prevail,” Blado said.

Earlier this year, NLRB General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo, who was appointed by President Joe Biden, said at an event that the challenges were intended to prevent the agency from enforcing labor laws as companies “divert attention away from the fact that they’re actually law-breakers.”

Amazon is asking the court to issue an order that stops the agency from pursuing “unconstitutional” administrative proceedings against the company as the case plays out.

Security cameras monitor an extensive list of products stocked on those protected shelves, including batteries, lightbulbs, laundry detergent, pregnancy tests, deodorant, candles, medicine and baby food. Patrons pay at one of two dedicated check-out counters before being handed receipts and continuing their shopping trips.

The anti-theft measures at the store, 757 E. 20th Ave., don’t surprise some shoppers: “They call it ‘Un-Safeway’ for a reason,” Alex Haskins told The Denver Post in the parking lot, repeating a common nickname for that location.

Major supermarket chains are ramping up their efforts to prevent stealing by restricting access to certain aisles, installing merchandise lock boxes, hiring security guards and more. Corporate spokespeople point to retail crime as a major problem for the grocery and convenience store industries, though several declined to discuss measures at specific stores in Denver.

“Different products experience different theft rates, depending on store location and other factors,” said Amy Thibault, a spokesperson for CVS Pharmacy. “Locking a product is a measure of last resort.”

Often, such actions come as an inconvenience to customers, with the new security protocols recognized as nationwide annoyances. The union representing Colorado grocery store workers says they’re Band-Aid solutions to larger problems: shortages of employees and security.

“Locking up merchandise can be an effective theft deterrent, but it underscores the need for more staff and more security in our stores,” said Kim Cordova, the president of the United Food and Commercial Workers Local 7. “With limited staff, customers face delays in accessing products, leading to frustration that often falls on our essential grocery store workers.”

The grocery industry, which is making less money now compared to recent years, predicts it will shell out more cash to hire and keep employees through benefits, training and other measures, according to the industry publication Grocery Dive.

Last year, the industry’s profit margin — 1.6% — was about as low as percentages before the COVID-19 pandemic years, which sent margins up to as high as 3% in 2020, when Americans spent months under lockdowns.

“It’s a marginal business. We work at the margins,” said Pete Marczyk, the co-founder of Marczyk Fine Foods. He runs a locally owned grocer with two locations in the Uptown and Hale neighborhoods.

His small business isn’t spared from theft — and he feels the financial hits personally.

“To us, it’s rent money,” Marczyk said. “That’s the money I need for tuition for my kid.”

Denver neighborhoods with highest theft rates

In Denver, several stores that have implemented some of the most extensive anti-theft measures aren’t located in neighborhoods with the highest reports of shoplifting offenses at supermarkets.

From Aug. 1, 2023, to Aug. 1, 2024, the Central Park neighborhood had the most larceny reports at local stores, with 98, according to the Denver Police Department. Union Station followed with 45, then Montclair with 37, Baker with 31 and Hampden with 14.

Five Points — home to the Safeway store with cordoned-off aisles — didn’t make the top 15 neighborhoods, ranking 17th.

But perhaps owing to the store’s past experience with crime, a security patrol car was parked by the entrance on a late August afternoon while an officer talked to a customer by a car in the parking lot. And on a recent weekend, just inside the entrance, a security guard and an employee confronted a man they suspected of theft.

Creating a store within a store for certain products is a less-common approach, but Safeway has implemented the setup at some other locations — and customers who commented on a recent Denver-specific thread about the practice on Reddit had no shortage of opinions.

Albertsons, the parent company of Safeway, didn’t respond to requests for comment about its strategies to prevent stealing.

Several miles away, the protocols at a King Soopers location in the Central Park neighborhood — No. 1 on the police’s list for grocery thefts — felt relatively normal this week.

A sign at the front of the store, 10406 E. Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd., informed patrons that receipts were required when exiting the building. It banned the indoor use of suitcases, duffel bags and roller bags. In small print at the bottom, the sign said: “These enhanced safety measures will help combat crime.”

The store itself offered an upscale shopping experience, with sushi and cheese counters. Security cameras watched overhead, but infant care items, medicine, vitamins, toys and wine sat openly on display. Only cosmetics and detergent were stored under lock and key.

A security guard stood at the exit, but he didn’t make a move to check receipts.

Jessica Trowbridge, a spokesperson for King Soopers and City Market, declined to provide details on their anti-theft practices “to preserve the integrity of our security measures.” But she said stores work with law enforcement to fight crime.

“We are disappointed by the increased level of crime across retail establishments,” Trowbridge wrote in a statement. “We have recently deployed additional solutions to help prevent and deter illegal activity, and although early in implementation, we have received positive feedback from associates and customers.”

Other well-known brands keep their theft-prevention tactics concealed from the public.

“Some products are subject to additional security,” said Kelsey Bohl, a spokesperson for Walmart. “Those determinations are made on a store-by-store basis.”

Companies offering business security to the grocery industry are more direct about potential strategies. InVue, a North Carolina-based technology company, highlights several methods to prevent shoplifting, including employee training, inventory checks, security tags, smart locks and more.

At a Walgreens location at 120 N. Broadway on the edge of the Baker neighborhood, the security measures were pronounced.

Lock boxes were common along many of the aisles, making facial products, perfume, deodorant, games and dietary supplements inaccessible unless a patron pressed a customer service button to flag down an employee.

The impact of crime was also apparent: Shoppers entering and leaving the pharmacy on Tuesday were greeted by a busted window covered with plywood.

“Retail crime is one of the top challenges facing our industry today,” said Megan Boyd, a spokesperson for Walgreens. “These additional security measures allow us to improve on-shelf availability of products to customers.”

“It really is almost fruitless”

At some big-name stores, it’s largely business as usual.

The Berkeley neighborhood’s Safeway location, 3800 W. 44th Ave., sits in a quiet shopping center near a State Farm Insurance office and an Anytime Fitness health club. Vitamins and detergent are within arm’s reach. The only items locked away are premium wines, including bottles of Veuve Clicquot and Dom Pérignon.

The neighborhood recorded just four larceny offenses at grocery stores over the last year, DPD’s data shows.

For now, smaller retailers operating in the Denver area are keeping their items unlocked, too.

At the 7305 N. Pecos St. location of the Hispanic grocery chain Lowe’s Mercado, toiletries, laundry detergent, wine and beer are readily available to patrons, with only jewelry and medicines like NyQuil shielded in display cases.

Marczyk Fine Foods’ stores use security cameras, barcode tracking and employee training to mitigate stealing, which Pete Marczyk estimates happens about once a day.

Since the pandemic, he said, he’s noticed a lack of police presence in the city, and his business can’t afford its own high-level security guard. Customers shouldn’t expect lock boxes throughout his stores, he said, in part because expensive products, such as ribeye steaks, are already behind glass.

“We don’t have the financial wherewithal at our size,” Marczyk said, “to really take steps beyond making sure, as much as we can, that our employees are safe and that customers feel safe when they come in our stores.”

The silver lining is that with only two locations, they’re often not targets of organized theft. And Marczyk Fine Foods more often handles nuisance issues.

But Marczyk knows that he’s not alone in his challenges. He recalled watching a woman run out of King Soopers with a cart of groceries while a security guard looked on.

“It really is almost fruitless,” Marczyk said. “If somebody’s going to walk in and steal from you, they’re going to walk in and steal from you.”

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Police officials attribute the policy change to a need to control crowds and prevent violent incidents after bars and nightclubs let out. But food truck operators and advocates question any attempt to correlate people hawking hot dogs and crime.

“This ban doesn’t even make any sense,” said Justin Pearson, an attorney at the Virginia-based nonprofit Institute for Justice, which rallied against a similar Denver police policy in 2022. “Research shows food trucks make neighborhoods safer… (and) they’re taking away options for people to sober up before they head home. That is a horrible idea.”

Starting this week, food trucks are prohibited from parking along Blake, Market and Larimer streets, between 18th and 21st streets, and on 21st, between Market and Larimer, from 10 p.m. to 3 a.m. on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays.

Establishments inside the prohibited zone include Viewhouse Ballpark, Dierks Bentley’s Whiskey Row, Tap Fourteen and the 1up Arcade Bar.

Police alerted food truck operators to the change last weekend by passing out fliers, though officials acknowledged to The Denver Post on Wednesday that those leaflets contained an error: They mistakenly said the restrictions were also in place Thursday nights.

“The restricted area of operation is intended to help reduce the number of ‘bump into’ fights and incidents that escalate to gun violence occurring among crowds during these nights and hours, and to encourage people to leave the LoDo area soon after the bars and nightclubs shut down,” the Denver Police Department said in a statement.

Violent crime, however, is down this year in that area, according to data posted by the Denver Police Department.

The part of LoDo where food trucks now are prohibited on late weekend nights straddles the Union Station and Five Points neighborhoods. Denver police data shows reported violent crime is down 17% so far in 2024 over the three-year average in the Union Station neighborhood and down 1% over the three-year average in Five Points — though the latter neighborhood is much larger and features other distinct nightlife areas.

The city does intend to create two or three designated zones for food trucks to operate in the area, but details are still being fleshed out, police said. “This is a pilot program and DPD will evaluate the initiative and results moving forward to determine whether adjustments are needed,” the department’s statement said.

In addition to the food truck restrictions, Denver police said they also implemented rideshare pick-up zones in July, increased officer staffing, improved lighting and increased outreach to bars and clubs in the area to address late-night safety.

Police officials declined to answer any further questions from The Post about what new events prompted the food truck restrictions.

In the summer of 2022, food trucks first were barred from operating in LoDo for about a month following a mass shooting in which Denver police wounded an armed man and six bystanders, though city officials denied a connection between that shooting and the ban.

David Sevcik, owner of Food Truck Avenue, which oversees operations for several Colorado food trucks including Mac N’ Noodles and Mile High Cheesteaks, said his trucks haven’t catered to downtown Denver nightlife for years because dealing with city regulations is so difficult.

“If we’re afraid of having a crowd in any environment, why are we serving food at sports arenas then?” Sevcik said. “Denver metro is becoming anti-food truck.”

Denver police’s statement said the department recognizes the impact on food truck businesses and “minimized the footprint of the restricted area to the greatest extent possible to achieve the intended goals.”

“DPD wants the food truck operators to be successful and for the area to be as safe as possible,” the statement said.

John Jaramillo, co-founder of the local Hispanic Restaurant Association, said food trucks have previously called on him to advocate on their behalf against the city’s restrictions. He said he understands officials are dealing with complex, nuanced issues but does not understand how food trucks contribute to violence.

“I don’t see how a person trying to make a living out of a legitimate business is a crime issue,” Jaramillo said. “That’s more of a structural city issue — homelessness, gangs.”

Two years ago, Pearson — the Institute for Justice attorney — questioned whether Denver’s food truck ban was unconstitutional. Now he said the new restrictions are “outrageous.”

“Everyone knows food trucks aren’t a problem here,” he said. “The police department shouldn’t be able to have this power to begin with and in most cities they don’t.”

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Until recently, NA offerings weren’t widely available at bars. But that’s changing both in response to shifts in consumers’ drinking habits and broader education about no- and low-ABV products, categories that continue to grow. Gone are the days when folks who wanted a sober beverage needed to settle for something from the soda gun. Bars and restaurants, including fine dining establishments, now offer robust menus of NA cocktails, alcohol-free beers that stand up to the real thing, and even tasting menus that substitute traditional wine pairings for NA beverages.

“The thing you’re seeing and that is overdue is more sophisticated versions of non-alcoholic drinks. So rather than calling everything a virgin-something, we’re really starting to see the craft cocktail movement embrace non-alc,” said Jump, a celebrated local mixologist who served as the bar manager at the local Death & Co. in Denver for four years.

Jump is a leader in this space. This summer, she was named the Best U.S. Bar Mentor at the Spirited Awards, part of the prestigious Tales of the Cocktail conference in New Orleans, for her “unwavering efforts to prioritize health and wellness in the hospitality industry.”

Jump does that, in part, through Focus on Health, an organization she co-founded in 2020 that offers services to help enrich the lives of hospitality workers, from mentorship and scholarship programs to harm reduction training, non-alcoholic beverage consulting and even run clubs.

One of its initiatives is the Low/No Tour, a traveling pop-up series that educates bartenders on non-alcoholic products, how they’re made, and how they work in recipes. Education also gets put into practice in each city when the pop-up opens to the public and serves original no- and low-ABV cocktails. Proceeds from the events support other nonprofits in the space.

Started in 2023, inspiration for the No/Low Tour came from Jump and her partners’ desire to create more inclusive spaces within the hospitality sector – and not just for customers. The tour annually travels to about a half-dozen U.S. cities and coincides with other industry events, like Tales of Cocktail and Portland Cocktail Week, offering professionals an alternative to boozy bacchanalia.

“There are people in our industry who do not drink or do not want to drink as much, and we’re not creating opportunities for them to thrive when doing these big events,” Jump said.

Plus, the more bartenders become knowledgeable about non-alcoholic spirits and RTDs, the more options customers will have when they belly up. One that’s trending as of late is the multi-course tasting menu paired non-alcoholic beverages instead of wine.

In May, Jump collaborated with Denver restaurant Koko Ni on a seven-course dinner in which each dish featured a pairing from one of three different NA brands. For example, the restaurant served a flatiron steak and mushroom entree with a cocktail blending Three Spirit Nightcap NA elixir, marigold, chicory and beet. The asparagus appetizer came alongside a libation made with sencha tea, yuzu and Mahala, a botanical NA spirit.

Hansel Morales, Koko Ni’s beverage manager, and Jarmel Doss, beverage director for its parent company FAM Hospitality, developed the recipes for the non-alcoholic pairings. Much like a wine pairing, they sought to create profiles that both complemented and contrasted the food. They also wanted to hit flavors and textures that represented the ingenuity of alcoholic cocktails.

“We also had this intention that non-alcoholic (drinks) are not just sodas and juices. People want something that is lower sugar content, that feels more sophisticated and more elegant,” Morales said.

Koko Ni often partners with local breweries and distilleries on dinner pairings, and Morales hopes to do more NA ones soon, too. The demand is clearly there. Most stats point to Gen Z, which drinks less than its predecessors, but Jump said the majority of people who indulge in NA offerings also still consume alcoholic beverages — as much as 78%, she said citing proprietary data collected for the NA brand Ritual.

“If you’re a tasting restaurant and you’re offering pairings, but not non-alcoholic pairings, you’re just leaving money on the table,” Jump said.

While fine dining restaurants and upscale bars are currently leading the way, she hopes to see non-alcoholic drinks become menu mainstays because it makes good business sense. With an ever-growing inventory of products to choose from, including ready-to-drink cocktails, it’s never been easier to integrate into a bar program.

“Fifteen years ago, you couldn’t go to every bar and ask for a Last Word,” she said about the gin-based cocktail that has become popular in recent years. “You could argue 10 years from now, you go in anywhere and ask for a non-alcoholic Last Word.”

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That much is clear after watching a 90-minute documentary called “¡Casa Bonita Mi Amor!,” which follows the co-creator of “South Park” and partner Matt Stone on a journey to reopen the beloved Lakewood restaurant they visited as kids growing up in Colorado.

The film has so far only played at prestigious events like Tribeca Film Festival and Telluride Film Festival, but locals will get to see it first when it comes to the Alamo Drafthouse Sloan’s Lake starting on Sept. 6. It then rolls out to select theaters across the U.S. and will stream on Paramount+ this fall.

“¡Casa Bonita Mi Amor!” is a must-see for Denver-area fans not only because the landmark is a local one, but also because it’s hard to fathom just how decrepit the building was after decades of neglect.

“Have you ever seen ‘Kitchen Nightmares’? It’s the very, very worst one of those you could possibly ever imagine,” Parker told The Denver Post in 2022.

When viewers see the dirt clogging the air vents and tumbling out of air ducts, metal posts rotting to become structurally unsound, and the layers of grime and fire damage throughout the kitchen, it’s easy to understand why Casa Bonita’s renovation took nearly two years. That’s even before you consider construction woes teams on the ground encountered, such as a 5,000-gallon-per-day leak in the new pool and having to redo a shoddy job on the kitchen floor.

“This is the single most dangerous thing I’ve ever seen,” the construction manager says in one clip, pointing to a narrow hole in the ground flanked by electrical boxes where cliff divers exit the pool.

It cost Stone and Parker an estimated $40 million-plus to, as they prefer to say, “restore” Casa Bonita. No level of business savvy could ever sign off on that type of project. It requires blind passion.

“¡Casa Bonita Mi Amor!” highlights how Parker was enchanted by and mildly obsessed with the Pink Palace from a young age. His father, Randy Parker, says in the movie that when the family visited Casa Bonita, the younger Parker would run around talking about what he’d change to improve the experience. In one prophetic clip from 2012, the “Book of Mormon” cast visits Casa Bonita and Stone jokes about how Parker may one day own the place.

Director Arthur Bradford and producer Jennifer Ollman aptly capture the Colorado culture surrounding the venue by visiting the annual Casa Bonita-themed art show NEXT Gallery and following the incessant media coverage about its promised reopening. As the deadline to open the doors draws closer, they interview fans who are camped out in the parking lot in hopes of being the first to dine there.

Denver Chef Dana “Loca” Rodriguez plays a starring role as the resolute leader of kitchen operations and it’s a joy to watch her at work, especially when she’s using the colorful language characteristic of a conventional “South Park” episode.

There are other little details in “¡Casa Bonita Mi Amor!” to delight dedicated locals. For example, the documentary follows the restaurant’s construction in the 1970s and sets the record straight about the original color. (It’s “dusty pink,” according to one of its leading designers.) It also offers deep insight into Parker’s creative vision for the new and improved Casa Bonita.

The film is funny, of course, but it’s also heartfelt. As excitement builds for the grand reopening, it becomes clear the owners feel the weight of the public’s expectations. Fear about the concept not working is palpable from everyone involved. (Though as the documentary shows, that was a common sentiment in 1974 when Casa Bonita first opened, too.) Parker and Stone appear terrified to let fans down.

The good news is we know how this story ends. Casa Bonita reopened to much fanfare in 2023 and has since served about half a million guests, most of whom have shared rave reviews. In a post-screening panel at the Telluride Film Festival, Parker said Casa Bonita is not yet profitable, but the fact reservations open to everyone soon should help. The release of “¡Casa Bonita Mi Amor!” may also go a long way, as it inspired excitement to visit among many viewers.

The biggest takeaway from the film, however, should be that anyone will get to visit at all. It underscores the reality that Casa Bonita would have probably remained closed forever – relegated to a distant, cliff-diving, sopapilla-serving memory – without Stone and Parker’s intervention.

“No one would have done it the way we did because it didn’t make any sense and it wasn’t smart,” Stone says in the documentary. “I’m really proud.”

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The company is expanding to Phoenix under the moniker Formation Brewing., said CEO Robert MacEachern. Construction is currently underway on an existing 10,000-square-foot building in an art district called Roosevelt Row. He anticipates it will open before the end of 2024.

The expansion to Arizona enables the 13-year-old beer maker to build a regional presence while also helping grow the local craft beer scene there, MacEachern said. He sees many similarities between Denver and Phoenix – including vibrant communities centered around music, art and the outdoors – that make the latter city an attractive destination for expansion.

Plus, there’s plenty of opportunity for growth in the beer market, MacEachern said. “The maturity of the Denver market is about five years ahead of Phoenix. We see a lot of opportunities to really drive our brand.”

The crux of that strategy is embedding in the local culture and community, and creating products with “Phoenix flair,” he added. That’s why the company opted to start Formation Brewing instead of opening a satellite DBC location with “Denver” in the name.

When it opens, Formation’s facility will house a 10-barrel brewhouse turning out a variety of styles of feed the onsite bars’ 24 draft taps. It will also have six serving tanks plus additional beverage options like hard lemonade and wine. Formation’s core lineup will consist of four beers: a West Coast-style India pale ale, a pilsner, a hazy IPA and fruited ale with peach. Those will likely also be available in cans and sold to-go from the taproom.

DBC, which has five taprooms in Denver, Arvada and Littleton, is known for creating large gathering spaces, and Formation will be no different. The taproom will include an indoor-outdoor patio and a roughly 3,000-square-foot mezzanine with a bar and seating. The kitchen there will serve burgers, sandwiches and salads, as well as Detroit-style pizza using local ingredients.

“Nothing says drink a few beers like pizza,” MacEachern said.

Once open, Formation Brewing hopes to become a community hub and participate in neighborhood events like First Friday, when live music echoes from nearly every street corner. Eventually, it hopes to begin distributing packaged beer throughout the market.

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The famed Lakewood restaurant officially opens to the general public on Oct. 1, owners Matt Stone and Trey Parker told The Denver Post in an exclusive interview. That’s the first day reservations will be available to anyone craving food, fun and a festive atmosphere. Bookings open on Sept. 16 at casabonitadenver.com.

Since Casa Bonita made its post-pandemic debut in June 2023, it’s been one of the most exclusive dining establishments in Colorado. Up until now, the only way to get a table has been to enter a lottery and hope to receive an invitation to purchase tickets, which buy entry, a meal and access to all the attractions like Black Bart’s Cave and the waterfall with its famous cliff divers.

Stone and Parker said they didn’t intend for access to be limited for so long, but it was necessary to work out the operational kinks of such a unique venue. They’ve made some big changes over the year-plus of soft opening phase, too.

Starting Oct. 1, Casa Bonita will no longer require guests to buy a pre-paid ticket. Instead, they’ll be able to make reservations like they do at any other restaurant. Stone and Parker also recently decided to nix the buffet line, so patrons will be sat and served food in a more traditional dining format. At the end of the meal, guests will receive their check and pay.

Pricing, however, won’t change. Adult entrees cost $29.99 to $39.99 depending on if you visit during lunch or dinner, and kids’ meals run $19.99 to $24.99. While Casa Bonita servers still receive a flat hourly wage, checks will include a tip line should guests want to throw in a little extra.

Stone and Parker admit the food buffet line was part of the nostalgia of Casa Bonita, but it wasn’t necessarily good for the customer experience.

“It was causing so many problems,” Parker said. “It was the reason people ended up sitting down and their food was cold. Also we didn’t love watching people experience Casa Bonita (while) they’ve got a giant tray of food in their hands.”

“It was keeping us from making food as good as possible,” Stone added.

That’s also why the ticketing system had to go. The duo consulted with experts who advised treating entry to Casa Bonita like an amusement park or zoo, which sounded fitting in theory but was always confusing to explain to the public, they said. Once Stone and Parker began leaning into Casa Bonita’s identity as a restaurant and shaping logistics to fit those familiar standards, things ran more smoothly.

The broader opening has been a long time coming for both the owners and local fans. Stone and Parker — also the creative minds behind popular TV show “South Park” — bought Casa Bonita out of bankruptcy in 2021 and spent a cool $40 million to refurbish it.

Coincidentally, they reopened the Pink Palace two decades after featuring it on an episode of “South Park” and catapulting it to international acclaim. Stone and Parker also channeled some of their experiences into a recent episode in which Cartman reopens a hot dog stand, based not-so-subtly on the sausage-and-bun-shaped Coney Island Boardwalk in Bailey.

Since last summer, the owners tinkered with everything from small elements like the timing of magic and puppet shows to large logistics like paying for and picking up food, adjusting as more people came through the doors. Stone said Casa Bonita currently serves 11,000 to 12,000 diners per week.

“We thought we needed a couple weeks to figure that out — and we needed a solid year,” Parker explained.

Parker likened the experience to staging a Broadway show in that the owners couldn’t have predicted certain challenges until they saw how all the components worked together in real time. Stone and Parker made their theater debut in 2011 with “The Book of Mormon,” but coordinating Casa Bonita was “way more difficult,” they said.

“It’s like putting on a Broadway show that’s also a restaurant,” Parker said.

“In some ways, it was we’re restoring something, so you go, ‘OK there is a form and a template,’ but it was less of a template than we thought,” Stone added. “Theater is a well-worn art form and Casa Bonita, there’s only one in the world like that.”

Still, the owners have been overwhelmed by the response. Feedback has been predominantly positive, Stone said. Much to his surprise, many adults have booked tables and opted to leave their kids at home despite the core experience being family-friendly.

“There’s so much nostalgia around the place that a lot of that goodwill we’re feeling isn’t all our doing. It’s just restoring something and a connection to the past,” Stone said.

Tips for getting a table

Even once reservations open to the general public, demand is likely to be high. Casa Bonita has so far served 500,000 guests, Stone said. But with more than 900,000 addresses on Casa Bonita’s email newsletter list, many longtime fans have likely not yet been selected from the lottery. Anyone who has been invited to purchase tickets via the email list can still book a reservation through Sept. 30.

Additionally, anyone who signed up for the newsletter list will be invited to join a “founders club” with special perks like preferred access to reservations and special events, a personalized membership card, and discounts on purchases from the Casa Bonita Mercado, both online and in-person. (Sopaipilla-scented candles, anyone?)

Locals eager to book a table should consider going with a small group, Stone and Parker said – even as small as two people. That’s because there are a limited number of large tables and they fill up quickly.

“You could never build Casa Bonita today the way it is. With fire codes and whatever, they would never let you build it like that with so many nooks and crannies,” Parker said. “It also made it so there are no large tables. I think we have two 10-tops in the entire restaurant. There’s tons of two-tops and four-tops that will be empty a lot, and it’s not a matter of let’s put these two tables together. No, because there’s a giant piece of rock right here you can’t.”

Even better, many small tables provide prime viewing to the cliff diving show, which Parker said was among his favorite attractions to reinvent “from kitschy crappy to kitschy classy.” That involved investing in sound and lighting near the 30-foot indoor waterfall, choreographing new routines, and sourcing the specific 1970s-era swimsuits to tie everything together.

“From moment one, we were like that’s the new Casa Bonita. Everything needs to come up to that level,” Parker said of the new dive show. “It’s still silly and fun and whatever, but it’s treated with respect and that’s what we had to bring everything up to.”

As Casa Bonita marks its 50th year, Stone and Parker hope to keep things running smoothly and add seasonal and holiday elements to the venue. They emphasized appreciation for fans’ patience while promising to continually evolve certain aspects and offerings to enhance the customer experience.

“We don’t have any details about it, but we’re trying to spread it out and make this 50th year kind of memorable, maybe start some traditions that continue,” Stone said.

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Denver developer Travis McAfoos, part of a team that purchased the restaurant and 5.4 acres of surrounding land out of bankruptcy in 2022, filed a pre-application with Jefferson County Planning and Zoning on Aug. 7 to convert the site to a QuikTrip location.

“The current property owners are evaluating the feasibility of relocating the existing restaurant to a nearby property, thereby creating the opportunity to redevelop the property by utilizing the existing property’s footprint,” wrote Coy Williams, a project manager with Kimley-Horn and Associates, a national design, engineering and consulting firm tasked with the redevelopment effort.

Williams wrote that a second access point would be added on the west side of the existing parcel and that QuikTrip’s proposed design would maintain the mountainous characteristic of Evergreen’s area plan, keeping the one structure planned to a single-story, even though zoning allows for up to three stories.

Founded in 1948, El Rancho has seen multiple owners and tried different formats over the years, including hosting a gift shop and more recently a brewpub. Despite its longevity and popularity as a stop, the restaurant building doesn’t have a historic designation, leaving its fate in the hands of Jefferson County planners.

A day before McAfoos filed the request to convert the El Rancho parcel to QuikTrip Store #4288, his co-investors, Evergreen commercial real estate developers Jack and Sherry Buchanan, through their company Observatory Holdings LLC, submitted a pre-application to develop a hotel, bar and restaurant on land between the El Rancho and the highway.

They are proposing three buildings on the site: a restaurant at 6,500 square feet, a bar at 1,600 square feet and a hotel with 18,500 square feet, as well as a 181-space parking lot.

On the northwest corner of U.S. 40 and Rainbow Hill Road, the site once hosted the now-demolished Observatory Bar. It has two existing access points, and the Buchanans are negotiating additional right of way from the Colorado Department of Transportation, according to a letter filed with the county, also by Kimley-Horn.

McAfoos, reached by phone, declined to comment on the redevelopment of the El Rancho parcel or the fate of the restaurant. Sherry Buchanan did not respond to an interview request.

When McAfoos and the Buchanans acquired the struggling restaurant from Paul Vincent and his family, they seemed committed to its future, bringing in Bonanno Concepts, run by chef Frank Bonnano, to revamp the food service at the start of 2023.

That arrangement, however, only lasted until this April, with Bonanno’s departure partially blamed on the controversy surrounding a mandatory service fee included with every bill.

“Bonanno Concepts will no longer operate El Rancho Colorado, as our vision and values differ from the rest of the current investor group,” the company said in a statement at the time. “We wish them the best in their new approach and look forward to refocusing our attention on our Denver-based restaurants.”

QuikTrip, based in Tulsa, announced its first Colorado location in June 2022 on the site of Pasternack’s Art Hub in Lakewood, previously a pawn shop, and now has 13 locations, with up to 60 proposed for Colorado at one point.

“QuikTrip prides itself on its relations with its customers and the surrounding community,” Williams wrote in his pre-application letter, adding that the company “will soon launch a public website to provide information on the project.”

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The city council in the town about 38 miles west of Denver gave preliminary approval last Tuesday to an ordinance that would restrict adult-oriented businesses to industrial areas. The measure would amend the current ordinance that bars the businesses from being within 1,000 feet of similar businesses, homes, schools, public parks and other places.

The action follows a federal lawsuit filed against the city by RCI Holdings, whose businesses in the Denver area include the Diamond Cabaret strip club. The company, which owns nightclubs and sports bars across the country, said in a lawsuit filed Aug. 7 in U.S. District Court in Denver that the 1,000-foot restriction effectively bans sexually oriented businesses in Central City.

Council members will hold a public hearing Sept. 3 on the updated restriction and consider final approval of the ordinance. They’ll also consider putting the matter of allowing sexually oriented businesses in Central City to a public vote.

Asked how much of Central City is zoned industrial, Todd Williams, a council member, said “not much.”

RCI Holdings paid the city $2.4 million in 2022 for a building on Main Street. At the time, city officials said the company didn’t plan to open a strip club among the casinos.

But RCI Holdings claims in its lawsuit that the city approved the sale knowing that an affiliated company “would operate the premises as an adult-oriented nightclub.”

In July, a city board rejected a permit for RCI Dining Services, a subsidiary of RCI Holdings, because the building is within 1,000 feet of homes. The council rejected the company’s appeal. RCI Holdings then sued, contending that denial of the permit violates its constitutional rights of free speech and due process of law.

The city planning commission in 2022 recommended approving two ordinances that would modify the restrictions on the location of adult-entertainment businesses to make more sites in Central City eligible for their operation. City staffers also recommended adopting the changes, saying that the U.S. Supreme Court has upheld limited First Amendment protections for strip clubs and a total ban on them is unconstitutional.

Colorado voters in 1991 legalized gambling in Central City and two other historic mining towns: Black Hawk and Cripple Creek.

The two companies proposed what would be the largest supermarket merger in U.S. history in October 2022. They say joining together would help them rein in costs and better compete with big rivals like Walmart and Costco.

But the Federal Trade Commission sued to try to block the deal, saying it would eliminate competition and raise grocery prices in a time of already high food price inflation.

“This lawsuit is part of an effort aimed at helping Americans feed their families,” the FTC’s chief trial counsel, Susan Musser, said in her opening arguments on Monday.

The commission also alleges that quality would suffer and workers’ wages and benefits would decline if Kroger and Albertsons no longer competed with each other.

Before the hearing, several members of the United Food and Commercial Workers International union gathered outside the federal courthouse in downtown Portland with signs that said “Stop the merger” to speak out against the proposed deal.

“Enough is enough,” Carol McMillian, a bakery manager at a Kroger-owned grocery store in Colorado, said. “We can no longer stand by and allow corporate greed that puts profit before people. Our workers, our communities and our customers deserve better.”

Kroger and Albertsons said the merger would help secure union jobs. The company said it has added 100,000 union jobs since 2012.

To ease concerns about reduced competition and higher prices for consumers, the companies last month agreed to divest 579 stores and six distribution centers to C&S Wholesale Grocers, based in New Hampshire.

In the three-week hearing that opened Monday, the FTC is seeking a preliminary injunction that would block the deal while its complaint goes before an in-house administrative law judge. U.S. District Judge Adrienne Nelson is expected to hear from around 40 witnesses, including the CEOs of Kroger and Albertsons, before deciding whether to issue the injunction.

The attorneys general of Arizona, California, the District of Columbia, Illinois, Maryland, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon and Wyoming all joined the case on the FTC’s side. Washington and Colorado filed separate cases in state courts seeking to block the merger.

Kroger, based in Cincinnati, Ohio, operates 2,800 stores in 35 states, including brands like Ralphs, Smith’s and Harris Teeter. Albertsons, based in Boise, Idaho, operates 2,273 stores in 34 states, including brands like Safeway, Jewel Osco and Shaw’s. Together, the companies employ around 710,000 people.

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