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Here's a Tip. The Colorado State Open Thread, 3/17/2025 [1]
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Date: 2025-03-17
The Colorado State Open Thread is for those interested in our great square(ish) state of Colorado. If you’ve got news, want news, have plans to travel to the state, live here, want to live here, or used to live here in some other life, pull up a chair and share your thoughts about our state. I generally see the Colorado State Open Thread as a place to share not only major issues affecting Colorado, but also a place to bring forward news that may not have been noticed, but may be of interest to people in Colorado.
As I indicated in last week’s Open Thread, www.dailykos.com/…, I’m willing to drive around the state (and I’d like to do much more travel near and far) to visit areas like the San Luis Valley to see interesting things like the Sandhill Crane migration, the Alligator rescue and visit many small towns. I have an interest in going to southeastern Colorado for the tarantula migration this fall, but there are lots of beautiful areas in the mountains, the western slope, and, despite my ragging on it during another Open Thread, the eastern prairie is an area that can have beauty in the grasslands. As a result, please consider where you live and if you’d like to host a meeting of your local Kosaks either at a local restaurant, park or even in your own home and I’ll work here on Daily Kos to publicize it. And, if possible, I’d like to travel to it to meet the folks who spend time here online.
The topper for today is about the restaurant business in Colorado. Many restaurants are having problems and it’s partly, but not solely, due to rules imposed during the recovery from the Pandemic. The Denver Post has a lengthy story (should be a shared link) about how restaurants have been having to change their business models due to increasing minimum wage requirements in large cities like Boulder and Denver that affect the “minimum tipped wage” and how it doesn’t necessarily square with increases in minimum overall wages. There still are many restaurants that are seeing fewer customers than they used to, how costs have been going up quickly for ingredients like eggs and poultry, and many other reasons. If you’re interested in reading about why some of your favorite restaurants have closed or are struggling, please look at the story.
Five years later, the business of running a restaurant has grown ever more complex. COVID-19 exacerbated a shift away from personal interactions in restaurants for convenient yet stilted options like takeout, delivery apps and tablet ordering. It led to the prevalence of patio dining and the ability to take home a case of beer or bottle of wine with an order. The pandemic presaged larger, deeper changes to the restaurant industry, too. The effects of inflation, overseas wars and local minimum-wage statutes have all slimmed margins for owners in recent years. The landscape is physically different in Denver, where active retail licenses for full-service restaurants last year were down 22% from 2021, according to numbers provided by the city’s Department of Excise and Licenses. The fate of the state’s restaurant industry is at a tipping point, one that has landed loudly at the Colorado State Capitol, where legislators have been debating a bill aimed at providing restaurant owners with relief. The biggest issues these days, the restaurant owners say, are: Rising labor costs, especially in Denver, where the minimum wage has gone up by 65% in six years
A state credit for workers who make tips that hasn’t risen since 2017
High prices for common ingredients such as milk, flour and eggs, along with poultry and electricity
The cost of state programs to ensure paid family, medical and sick leave
From the Colorado Sun on the issue:
A major compromise by the restaurant industry and their advocates got a controversial bill passed by a state House committee late Friday. Their effort to change how tipped workers, like restaurant servers, are paid in areas where the local minimum wage is higher than the state’s, will be left to local governments, in an amendment that helped House Bill 1208 get approved by a vote of 11-2. “If the mark of a good compromise is that both sides leave dissatisfied, then Amendment L.018 is a total banger,” said Rep. Steven Woodrow, a Denver Democrat and the bill’s prime sponsor.
I’m betting that you probably heard about Colorado’s shame, Congresswoman Lauren Boebert stalking the Congressman from Maryland, Representative McBride, trying along with Congresswoman Nancy Mace to get a man ejected from the woman’s bathroom in the US Capitol, so I’m just going to give a link and pass on our disgusting person. www.yahoo.com/…
Damaging Teslas has come as a protest to Colorado. From the Colorado Sun: Arrest made in second round of vandalism at Colorado Tesla dealership
Asecond person suspected of using an “incendiary device” following a string of vandalism at a Colorado Tesla dealership has been arrested, police said Friday. The 29-year-old man was arrested Thursday on suspicion of second-degree arson, criminal mischief and other crimes at the dealership in Loveland, Colorado, on March 7, police said in a news release. Several vehicles and the dealership building were also damaged by rocks, police said. They did not release a possible motive.
From the western side of the state: the Grand Junction Sentinel reports USDA cuts $13 million program for Western Slope farmers, food banks, schools
More than $13 million, which benefited 30 Western Slope agricultural producers, food banks and food access in schools, vanished Wednesday. The U.S. Department of Agriculture canceled those funds, which supported Colorado’s Local Food Assistance Cooperative Agreement Program and Local Food for Schools & Child Care Agreement Program. According to local ranchers, food aggregators and food insecurity providers, the sudden decision will shrink the amount and variety of produce that hunger relief agencies can provide, but it will also spur economic losses across western Colorado. “I’m very concerned for some of our smaller farms who have been relying on these purchases,” Mountain Freshies Co-Founder and Owner Nancy Scheinkman said. “I am working hard to try and create some new institutional buyers … that can maybe replace some of it, but nothing is on my radar right now that’s going to come close. It’s a large portion of their business and of our business.” Mountain Freshies is a food aggregator, partnering with small and medium farms, mostly located in the North Fork Valley and Western Slope, to distribute their crops across the state.
Please think about a gathering — we’ve had some in Denver, one on the cog railway going up Pike’s Peak and I know we have a number of Kosaks down in the southwest. Also, please leave a comment so I can start dreaming of road trips this year.
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[1] Url:
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