Chuey Fu’s closes along Colfax in latest unsuccessful bid to expand
“How are you supposed to let people know you’re open when you can’t put anything outside?” he said in frustration with Denver's signage codes.
Chuey Fu’s Latin-Asian Grub has closed along Colfax after an eight-month run, ending a third bid to expand beyond its original Lincoln Park restaurant.
“The sales just weren’t there,” owner Joe Knoblich said. His restaurant’s last day at 2205 E. Colfax Ave. was the day before Thanksgiving. “We just couldn’t get any support from that neighborhood.”
Knoblich said sales were a third to a half of what he does at Chuey Fu’s original 1131 Sante Fe Drive location, despite the Colfax spot having several more tables. He also expressed frustration with city regulations regarding signage.
“How are you supposed to let people know you’re open when you can’t put anything outside?” he said.
Frank Locantore, executive director of the Colfax Ave Business Improvement District, which includes where Chuey Fu’s operated, said he hears that from nearly every business on the street.
“When you go to the city, it should be ‘here are the four different types of signs you can put up.’” Locantore said. “But what it is right now is that there are 45 page sign codes that you have to go through. That’s not a very business-friendly approach.”
Knoblich signed a five-year lease at the beginning of the year for the 3,096-square-foot space, which is being marketed by John Livaditas of Axio Commercial Real Estate. Knoblich said the buildout was self-funded and ran him $140,000, mainly for new equipment. Chuey Fu’s opened on April 1.
“It was just a good business decision overall to close, and just a bad one on my part to open up,” he said. “You roll the dice and you hope they don’t come up snake eyes.”
Knoblich said business was rough from the start, so he put in pool tables and other games to try to attract more customers. At one point, he handed out around 2,000 flyers to apartment complexes and businesses down Colfax advertising free margaritas and tacos.
But only around 15 people showed up, Knoblich said.
“I just don’t get Colfax. It’s hard not to take that personally. I don’t know. Maybe we just suck,” he said, laughing.
Chuey Fu’s first two bids to expand beyond one brick-and-mortar came undone largely due to COVID, Knoblich said. A location along South Broadway in Englewood, which opened in 2017, closed in 2021 because of staffing shortages. Another in Riverfront Park opened in 2018 but shuttered at the onset of the pandemic in 2020.
He said that even at the original Sante Fe joint, which he started in 2016 after years in a food truck, sales are down 25 percent.
“We had people coming in naturally and were developing business that way, but it’s a whole new world out there now eight years later,” he said.
Knoblich said he will keep the original restaurant — and add a brunch menu — as well as do events out of his food truck. But between the struggles on Colfax and Denver’s minimum wage rising to $18.81 come January, he isn’t eyeing an expansion anytime soon.
“I’m gonna let the dust settle and enjoy the moment of not running with my head cut off,” he said. “It would have to be an absolutely incredible space to open up in Denver because it’s just unaffordable.”
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