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While the details of the deal to take over the Owlbear space were being finalized, Llano, Graunke and Gallardo began putting on a series of pop-ups. Right at the last couple of days, we were talking with him about how we could possibly keep this going in some form, because none of us were ready to be done cooking barbecue specifically."
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"We started thinking, 'We know how to use them.' Honestly, Teven was a big part of that. "The tipping point was when we heard was considering selling the smokers," Graunke remembers. We were just thinking Owlbear would go on without us."īut then Fallenius called each of the Owlbear cooks to tell them that he was planning on shutting down for good - a decision driven by a number of factors, including operational challenges like food costs, but also mental health and burnout. "We were preparing to do our own thing, and didn't expect it to be barbecue. "The three of us were considering completely pivoting," Graunke explains. So did customers, who quickly made Owlbear a go-to in RiNo.īut a year into the pandemic, Llano and Graunke, along with Gallardo, who'd worked in a grocery store in Florida and in the marijuana industry in California before moving to Denver, started thinking about starting their own food business. "He used to hang out at the Blue Ox - my first barbecue job - although we didn't fully realize that until he'd been working with me for a bit," Fallenius says. Hudgins, it turned out, had likely met Fallenius years earlier, at a barbecue joint back in Austin.
"I was super lucky to have both of them on my team from the get-go." He just constantly stepped up to every challenge in front of him - and even ones not put in front of him," Fallenius adds, laughing. "He very quickly became my number-one guy. Like Llano, Graunke was vocal about wanting to be part of the team at the barbecue joint. " was a regular at Finn's, and when we were building out the restaurant, he kept checking in, asking if there was a place for him on the team," Fallenius says.įallenius had met Graunke, who was formerly a teacher in Wisconsin but had been doing hospitality gigs on the side for years, when both were working at the now-closed Bar Fausto before Owlbear opened. "It was my first cooking job I was just very interested in it from having tried the barbecue." Before that, he'd worked a series of jobs, including health advising, pizza delivery and a short stint at 14er Brewing. "I always knew that when this opened, I wanted to be part of the team," Llano recalls. All three started working for Fallenius right around when Owlbear's brick-and-mortar location opened in May 2019 before that, it had operated out of Finn's Manor and did a series of pop-ups. Karl helped with a lot of that, and we're very grateful for that experience," Llano says. "We learned a lot and grew as barbecue cooks tremendously, because we were at zero. While Hudgins, who moved to Denver from Texas, came to Owlbear with plenty of barbecue knowledge, Llano and Graunke had none. "But mostly because Teven's not here anymore. When people talk about how this isn't going to be quite Owlbear, I think to myself, 'Well, yeah, you're right,'" says Llano. And Hudgins has inspired them every step of the way. So formative that Llano, Graunke and partner Esteban Gallardo will open their own barbecue restaurant, Pit Fiend, in the former home of Owlbear later this month. "We had a couple other cooks that came through, but we were the core crew during the pandemic, which was really formative." The loss hit the tight-knit team hard, recall colleagues Juan Pablo Llano and Michael Graunke. "He was a great inspiration.as far as how to cook barbecue, but also how to break the rules a little bit," Llano says. Hudgins passed away on January 23 "from organ failure due to insufficient oxygen for an extended period," with excessive alcohol, smoking, weight and undiagnosed sleep apnea listed as triggers in a statement released by his family shortly after. On January 22, as a long line of Owlbear fans waited for a final taste of barbecue, Fallenius got a call informing him that one of his mainstays, Teven Hudgins, was in intensive care. After nearly two years of operating Owlbear, his popular barbecue joint at 2826 Larimer Street, largely as takeout-only, Fallenius announced that the restaurant would close after service on January 23.īut it never did open for that last day.