Drew Shader walked in wearing a dark baseball cap and an untucked shirt. He gave Bob a brotherly hug and shook Mitzi’s hand as they glanced around the unfinished dining room. Looking at me, he smiled and extended his hand with a friendly hello. It was the first time I’d met Mitzi, and I hadn’t seen Bob or Drew in three years. Time and COVID hadn’t made a dent in their willingness to help others. It was good to be back.
Colorado has always been a special place for me. Back in the late 1990s, I traveled there for a meeting at U.S. Space Command, but other than driving to the top of Pike’s Peak in a convertible, I didn’t really get a chance to explore the surrounding area. It was still amazing.
When talking with people about the American West, one of the hardest things to do is communicate the enormity and scale of the landscape. Denver sits on the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains. If you stand anywhere with an unobstructed view, to the east are flat grassy plains as far as the eye can see. To the west, some of the tallest mountains in the United States are so close they cast shadows over parts of the city and landscape in the late afternoon. Even in summer, there’s snow on the peaks. This is where the Great Plains end and the rugged West begins.
About twenty years after my first trip there, I came back on spring break with my wife and kids. Flying out of Columbus, Ohio at 6:30 a.m., we touched down in Denver shortly before 10:00 a.m. Mountain Time and wanted to grab breakfast. Scanning TripAdvisor, my wife found a place that was featured on Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives called the Denver Biscuit Company (DBC). It sounded like a good choice.
Mitzi Vallon, Bob Schmied, Zac Northup, and Drew Shader.
The story of Denver Biscuit Company starts with football and a conversation on a plane. Growing-up in Orlando, Florida Drew Shader’s family moved to Boulder when he was a junior in high school. He was recruited by Colorado University to play football and joined the team in 2001. By 2003, six surgeries to fix a chronic shoulder injury led him to the realization that his football career was over.
While on a flight later that year, he struck up a conversation with the passenger sitting next to him who happened to own a bar in downtown Denver called the Atomic Cowboy. It sounded like a real opportunity and Drew accepted an offer to do a nine-month internship at another restaurant owned by the same group. Drew’s dad even invested. A short time later, the owner was forced to declare personal bankruptcy for matters unrelated to the business. Owing significant money to the Shaders, a court ordered that the bar be turned over to them as part of a debt settlement. Drew took ownership in 2004 and set about rebuilding the Atomic Cowboy.
When ran properly, bars are one of the most profitable types of businesses in the food & beverage industry and adding food to the menu is part of a normal growth strategy. Drew liked pizza and wasn’t satisfied with the low-quality options available in the area. He decided to put in a pizza oven and started “slinging slices” out of the Atomic Cowboy. It did well enough that they purchased a food truck for the pizza business. Money started coming-in but a year later, Shader had an unconventional idea that he wanted to try.
As a southerner living in one of the most health-conscious cities in America, Drew missed the buttermilk biscuits that are served everywhere in Florida and the South. He couldn’t get a good biscuit anywhere in Denver. Ignoring advice to the contrary, he believed the Denver market would support a breakfast concept built around gourmet-quality southern biscuits. He tested it through the bar and the food truck and soon the Denver Biscuit Company “Biscuit Bus” was born.
“I was just thrown into the bar,” Shader told me with hammers pounding in the background. “The bar was not successful, but we stayed open. It provided enough to open a pizza shop. Which then allowed me to build a food truck, but we put everything we had into the truck. The food truck and the biscuit company allowed us to open a second location. So that was part of our smart growth. We could never afford to open a bunch of restaurants. It was like, let’s work this one for two to three years so we can afford to open the next one.”
Drew Shader with the Biscuit Bus, circa 2009. Photo Courtesy of Paste Magazine.
“Biscuits didn’t take off super-fast. It was definitely more of a traditional growth pattern. When we started Fat Sully’s it was very fast. We had a busy bar. We put a pizza shop in. We sold a lot of pizza. We did biscuits differently. One, it started as a food truck. Two it was a style of food that people weren’t used to, so there was an education around it. Then we started serving it out of this bar, which was a whole wrinkle in itself. But, you know, it picked up. I would say that when Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives came in late 2012, that was kind of like a moment when we knew we were doing something that resonated with people. People craved this food. It was never about what makes sense in the dietary realm and in Colorado.”
Over time, the bar, pizza, and biscuit company developed as independent brands. But instead of spinning each off into separate entities and tripling overhead, Drew housed all the concepts under one roof. Each was distinct and catered to different customers throughout the day. DBC was the breakfast concept. Fat Sully’s Pizza focused on lunch and dinner, and Atomic Cowboy kept things going for the evening crowd. After 2014, all three were managed under one company called Atomic Provisions. Organizing this way made maximum use of overhead and kept the space filled throughout the day. As the breakfast crowd finished-up, customers wanting lunch and dinner came for pizza at Fat Sully’s. At night, younger customers bought high-margin alcohol at Atomic Cowboy; three distinct brands targeting three types of customers who wanted three different experiences, served under one roof. It was a smart way to expand and grow a large customer base, and it’s a strategy that’s worked well ever since. Atomic Provisions is getting ready to open its seventh restaurant.
When entrepreneurs talk about how to succeed, they always say that businesses must solve a problem for customers. I asked Drew what problem Denver Biscuit Company solved. “Well, DBC came after the fact, so the bar was around for five or six years before DBC started. So, the bar was there to solve, you know, a drinking problem, which it did. Honestly, DBC solved my problem. I wanted the food I grew up with. There wasn’t any southern food in Denver. It wasn’t a trendy thing ten or twelve years ago. So, all our concepts were just food I wanted that I couldn’t find in Denver.”
In 2017, after a breakfast of chicken biscuits smothered in bacon and maple syrup at the DBC on South Broadway, my wife, kids, and I piled into a rental car and headed west from Denver. Over the next five days we stayed in Glenwood Springs, Grand Junction, Castle Valley, Moab, and then headed south through eastern Utah on our way to Durango, Colorado. One evening, after spending the day hiking in Mesa Verde National Park, we stopped at the park’s visitors center. My wife and girls went inside, and I had a seat on a short stone wall next to a Puebloan sculpture. It was around 5:00 p.m. and the place was empty. The April sky was still deep blue, the sun was warm, and there was absolutely no one else around. I laid back and just stared up at the clouds. For the first time in a very long time, I was at total peace. There was nothing else. Just the sound of the wind and an indescribable feeling of contentment that was hard to comprehend.
At times we assign significance to events that, in hindsight, have no real impact on our lives. That day, that moment, laying there on that wall, was a lasting moment for me. It changed my direction. Colorado and the West became my ideal version of America. A place of opportunity and potential, something that is sometimes thought to be missing in the Appalachian culture where I grew up. Helping others discover that sense of unlimited possibility became a mission that drove me forward for the next five years.
One of StandWatch Academy’s student expeditions at Colorado National Monument in 2018.
As part of a program I ran through my nonprofit, StandWatch.org, I began taking groups of students and chaperones out to experience the same things I did with my family but added an educational component. I coordinated meetings between students and small business owners who could offer advice and suggestions to kids wanting to start their own small businesses in rural areas and small towns. Over a three-year period, I was able to raise enough money to help over seventy-five kids from Appalachia see things and meet people in Colorado, Wyoming, South Dakota, Montana, Idaho, Utah, Arizona, Nevada, California, and New Mexico. Most of the students came from disadvantaged areas and couldn’t afford travelling. I was able to raise enough money from local businesses to pay all their expenses.
In 2019, through a partnership with Marshall University and the West Virginia Department of Education, a student film crew from Marshall’s school of journalism came along to film a documentary about the program. By that time, I had developed a basic entrepreneurship curriculum that the students were required to complete before being allowed to go on the expedition. Three months after they began the course, eight high school students, two teachers, and eight members of the Marshall film crew boarded a plane in Pittsburgh and flew to Denver. The students were from Lincoln County High School in Hamlin, West Virginia and several had never travelled outside their home counties. Flying to Colorado and doing a road trip that showed them a broader world was just as impactful as if they’d traveled to a foreign country.
The first people I wanted them to meet were Drew Shader and Atomic Provision’s operating partner, Bob Schmied, but in early 2019, I hadn’t personally met either of them. I reached out to Bob on LinkedIn. Both he and Drew were instantly on-board. When we arrived at the DBC on Tennyson Street, they were there to greet the group and told us order whatever we wanted. While enjoying the food, the students asked questions about revenue projections, creativity, marketing, and all the other things that interest people who are thinking about starting a business someday.
Bob and Drew with the Lincoln County High School students and teachers in 2019.
After sitting for an interview with the film crew, Bob, Drew, and I talked for another hour about the students, Atomic Provisions’ origins, and how businesses of all sizes can do more to help kids understand the basics of entrepreneurship. During the conversation, I mentioned that we were spending the night near Colorado Springs. As we were walking out, Bob pulled me aside and gave me the address for their place on Tejon Street and said the manager would be waiting for us. When we walked in that evening, she treated us to Fat Sully’s pizza and a new concept they were launching called Frozen Gold Ice Cream. A couple of the students had never eaten anywhere nicer than the McDonalds in Hamlin. One later told me that the breakfast and dinner she had that day at the Denver Biscuit Company and Fat Sully’s was one of the most memorable experiences of her life.
Students from Lincoln County High School having dinner at Fat Sully’s in Colorado Springs in 2019.
Less than a year after the Lincoln group met Drew and Bob, COVID shut everything down. My nonprofit lost all in-person access to the four schools I was working in and everything went remote. Some of the students who travelled to Denver pitched their concepts to investors via ZOOM, but everything ground to a halt by the summer of 2020. Donations went from over $100,000 annually to less than $10,000 in 2020. Over the previous three years, I had raised enough money to launch five separate student expeditions. Through weekly visits to the schools to teach the curriculum, nearly 125 students had spent over 130 days in the classroom learning how to start real businesses. We’d flown over ten-thousand air miles, driven over eleven-thousand miles, visited twelve different states, and spent the night in twenty-four different cities. All but one of the trips started with a flight to Denver.
As the COVID restrictions came off in 2021, I needed to go back to Colorado. I had to bring closure to the now dead program I had dedicated my life to since 2017. Throughout the lockdown I stayed in touch with Bob. In the spring of 2022, he told me they were getting ready to open their seventh restaurant in Centennial, Colorado. He also said he was getting ready to retire. Seeing the new place and thanking both Bob and Drew in person for their generosity was something I felt I had to do. I booked a flight the next day. Four weeks later, and on Bob’s last day with Atomic Provisions, I was sitting in that unfinished dining room with Bob, Drew, and their new Senior Vice President of Development, Mitzi Vallon. COVID had changed many things.
Historians and economists will be writing about the economic impact of COVID for decades. When state and local mitigation plans closed all their locations in March of 2020, Bob and Drew called people they respected and asked for advice. “Everyone said the same thing,” Bob said, “preserve cash, renegotiate your leases, and take all your fixed labor and whittle that down to what you need to survive. Drew and I looked at each other and said that doesn’t sound like us at all.”
Prior to joining Atomic Provisions, Bob spent decades in the restaurant industry working in management for some of the largest chains in the country. He knows how brutal the industry can be on people and relationships. One reason he came to work for Drew was his commitment to take care of his people.
Atomic Provisions spends a great deal of time and money developing staff and paying people well. Before the pandemic, the average server made between $40,000 and $60,000 a year. When the dining rooms closed, they were forced to lay off 500 of their hourly team members but kept all seventy-four of their full-time salaried people on-board without cutting pay or benefits. Most of the employees that were laid off have since come back, and the company now has a waiting list of applicants. Drew gives all credit for this to his managers and Bob.
“We kept all our salaried management whole throughout COVID, which was pretty cool. They worked their as— off, but they ran our stores for us. It taught us there’s a lot of demand for our food, even without dining rooms. Ultimately, it taught us that the culture we built all the years prior to COVID was so strong, it was what got us through. Whether it was the employees that came back to us, or every single manager who worked through COVID, we didn’t lose a single one. That was a big piece for me. What we built over the five or six years that Bob has been with us was super strong. That’s still what’s getting us through these times where people can’t find staff, can’t open their restaurants, and have to close early. We are overstaffed.”
The commitment to people is what drew Mitzi to join Atomic. Throughout her almost thirty-year career, she’s worked for companies like Boston Market, Chipotle, Molson Coors, and several others managing the real estate purchases and construction required to grow small concepts into large chains. She appreciates and aligns with Drew’s vision. “Getting to know these guys, their culture, getting to know their story. I love the potential. I just believe in it.”
Atomic Provisions’ new expansion plan is based on the lessons learned during COVID. The company was in good financial shape prior to the lockdown and within four or five weeks after closing their dining rooms, some of the stores were breaking sales records. Before COVID, visitors would come in, sit at a table, eat, and talk for an hour. Once the stores went to carry out only, the average order was placed online and prepared in seven to ten minutes. The customer walked-up to the window, swiped their card, and that was it. Customer throughput went through the roof. The seventh restaurant in Centennial is incorporating these lessons and more. Quick counter service and take out that maintains the high standards of their traditional restaurants is the future. Drew and Mitzi plan to expand this version of the Denver Biscuit Company to multiple locations throughout the Midwest by the end of 2023.
Mitzi believes Atomic’s expansion will coincide with a larger shift in the restaurant industry, and a lot of it has to do with the way management treats customers and employees. “I think the investment groups, where people have a commitment to certain returns, will face headwinds. Some of them may try to grow too fast. The next five years or so will be really interesting. People’s mindsets have shifted a little bit about what priorities are in life, and I think you have to be a company willing to recognize that. I hope there’s a lot of companies out there doing that, but I don’t know. We’ll find out over the next five to seven years where people are focused.”
I asked Drew how he thought the trends Mitzi was talking about will impact Atomic Provisions’ expansion. “I think the brands deserve to grow. But the folks on our teams deserve to grow. We’ve got a phenomenal group of managers which leads to a great group of employees. They want more. They’re hungry. They see a career path with us. And that motivates me to want to build more stores and continue to grow our people. That’s what Bob has brought to us and taught me over the last five to six years. Where we can take our people through this business is pretty phenomenal.”
It can be argued that, to save humanity from COVID, we dehumanized many of the things that made life worth living. Removing handshakes, smiles, weddings, birthday parties, graduations, travel, and all the other personal interactions that define us as human beings was devastating for millions of Americans. If Drew Shader, Mitzi Vallon, and the rest of Atomic Provisions’ team are successful, and given their track record there’s little reason to think they won’t be, Drew’s vision will bring a human-centric approach back to a sector of the economy that COVID almost destroyed.
The DBC in Centennial, Colorado where I met Drew, Bob, and Mitzi. It was still under construction but is now open.
When the plane landed at Denver International Airport in March 2022, I was alone. Before and after my meeting at DBC, I spent time visiting some of the places I had gone with my family and dozens of students. I went to the History Colorado Museum in Denver and then drove up to Rocky Mountain National Park. I ate at Fat Sully’s and drove through Garden of the Gods in Colorado Springs. I even tried to drive to the top of Pike’s Peak, but it was closed by the time I got to the park entrance. At each stop, the familiarity was comforting, but all I could think about was the absence of my family and friends. Traveling alone can be a relaxing experience, but for me, these places will always be associated with the times I shared them with others. All except one.
Twice while travelling with students, I went back to that wall at Mesa Verde hoping to find the same inspiration and escape that came to me before. But being there with people I barely knew introduced just the right amount of awkwardness that the wall was nothing more than a testament to one of life’s unfortunate realities; you can never go back to the perfect place. Time creates too much distance between yesterday’s memories and today’s demands. Where perfection existed, new realities creep in and overtake what existed before. As I travel to other places in the post-COVID world, maybe I’ll find peace somewhere else. But I will always remember that I found it on a stone wall in Colorado.
