Bruin Coffee and Biscuits, a “health-conscious” food and drinks brand born in Pagosa Springs, has opened a location in Durango.
The Durango site, located at 3211 Main Ave., is a drive-up and walk-up concept that operates out of a trailer. Food can be eaten in the nearby outdoor seating area or delivered to customers’ vehicles. The site has three drive-up spaces where customers can park and have their food brought to them.
The menu at the Durango location largely mirrors the Pagosa Springs menu, with featured items including gluten-free or gluten-full buttermilk biscuit sandwiches, gluten-free donuts, organic coffee, teas, ceremonial-grade matcha and iced fruit-concentrate refreshers.
Drinks range in price from $3.50 for a small Americano to $9.50 for an extra large matcha latte.
Biscuit sandwiches go for $9 to $10 on average, with the most expensive combination of build your own ingredients totaling about $12 and the least expensive about $5.
Six mini donuts go for $5, as does the Bruin “huge” cookie.
The drive-, walk- or bike-up Hooligan’s Coffee Bar, located at 802 Camino del Rio, has a similar model, but with fewer food offerings and no gluten-free options. The cheapest item on the Hooligan’s menu is a 12-ounce Americano for $3.95, and the most expensive is a 16-ounce caramel macchiato for $6.50. Hooligans also caters to four-legged friends with a few dog-safe options on its “For the Pups” menu.
Part of what sets Bruin aside from other coffee spots, said Bruin founder and Creative Director Jake Polster-Sadlon, is the eatery’s focus on organic, local ingredients, made-from-scratch offerings and the lack of artificial elements. The shop’s tagline is “All Yum, No Yuck.”
“Who wants to put (expletive) in their body, you know?” Polster-Sadlon said. “… There’s no seed oils, no artificial flavoring; there’s no fake anything. If you look at a regular Dunkin’ Donut, that thing has over 120 ingredients in it. Ours have less than 10.”
About eight employees work at the Pagosa Springs location, which operates as a drive-thru model in a permanent building, and 11 more were hired to work the Durango trailer site, he said.
Polster-Sadlon, who grew up in Durango, said he opened the second location as a way to test out expanding the model in a bigger market than Pagosa Springs, but a smaller one than Denver, where he hopes to open as many as a dozen locations.
“We thought, ‘Oh, a food trailer is a really interesting concept’ … (and) in order to prove the model and the logistics and the operation, we wanted to kind of stress test that, and about an hour drive (away from the first location) is what we’d be most comfortable with,” he said. “… The brand fits the demographic here really well.”
It took about eight weeks to get the new location up and running, he said.
Polster-Sadlon said the trailer is designed to serve the active, on-the-go customer on their way to the ski hill, the bike path or the hiking trail – and its location, near the Animas Mountain trailhead, is part of that.
The lot that houses the trailer, which is located across the street from north City Market, sat vacant for years before the mobile eatery claimed the space.
Polster-Sadlon envisions the business mirroring the local-gone-national models of Zuberfizz and Ska Brewing Co.
“These things that started as just some friends starting a cool concept, very simple, can now be seen across the country, and I think there’s some hometown pride to that, and I hope that this is the start of that,” he said.
The business donated 10% of all revenue from the grand opening, which took place June 27, to The Hive – a collaboration the eatery called a “natural fit for a brand built on showing up for its community.”
Reader Comments