Calif. couples dish up love for Longmont

LONGMONT — For two couples from California, moving to Colorado and opening a pair of restaurants in downtown Longmont has been about far more than making menus and money.

Besides cooking up contemporary cuisine, the owners of The Roost and Jefe’s Tacos & Tequila want to help people who are in the process of adopting children.

Dan and Alyssa Lance are raising three children, two of whom are adopted, and wanted to share the joy and support for adoption with others. But how? During a pre-dawn run in 2011, Dan Lance heard the crow of a rooster from a nearby farm and interpreted the sound as “a call of hope, a declaration of the new day quickly arising.”

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With the help of some musicians, artists, designers and other creative people, the Lances started The Rooster Party, a 501(c)(3) organization that would sponsor benefit events to aid families who want to adopt. ”But running the nonprofit was difficult,” Dan Lance said, “so we came up with the idea of running a for-profit business and helping our nonprofit.”

When his job in Redding, Calif., fell through, Dan Lance and his family moved to Colorado.

After rejecting spots in Lafayette and Boulder, Lance said, “I had a letter of intent on a building in Longmont that fell through, so I asked the Longmont downtown development folks, and they said a building right next to them was available” — a space on Main Street that had housed a succession of restaurants that failed. “We’ve heard of at least 10 concepts that were in the space,” Lance said. “Everyone told us the space was cursed, and we’d never last.”

Lance then called his friend Sean Gaffner in Redding, Calif. Gaffner had expansive experience as an executive chef and caterer. “I told Sean, ‘This is the sweetest spot in Longmont, but this isn’t going to be a consult thing. You’re going to have to move’,” Lance said. “He flew out, we gave our business proposal, they said yes, he moved his family of six out here in December 2014 and we opened in March 2015.”

The Roost was a natural name given the space’s rooftop seating area and Dan’s intent that the business would help support The Rooster Party. “We wanted a place to bring people together, serve our community,” Lance said.

“A year after we opened, another place came available overnight” — three blocks down Main Street from The Roost — “but we had to do a whole lot of updating” of the restaurant that had been called Antonio’s, Lance said. “Sean already had the concept for a taco and tequila place. We got the keys in February and opened Jefe’s in April 2016.

Both restaurants “have been amazing,” Lance said. “The Roost took off like gangbusters, so with Jefe’s, there’s a level of trust. We have a lot of business meetings, and we do a bunch of events for different companies, too — Christmas parties, office parties. There’s some built-in love from the business community, and it’s been cool” — especially since 10 percent of revenue goes to support adoption.

It also didn’t hurt to have Food Network icon Guy Fieri and his “Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives” entourage show up.

“Fieri was great,” Lance said. “He loved our story, loved our business, loved our food. He came here just based on emails from the community. So then we just got a call: ‘Be ready in four days!’  We had to shut down for three days. We missed three lunches and one full day — all for a 6½-minute show — to do the shoot, but it’s been great for our business.”

What’s in the future for the owners?

“Right now we’re really happy with the two that we have,” Lance said, but “Sean has hundreds of concepts in his head. I know he’d like to do something else. He could probably start five restaurants tomorrow if given the chance.”

Jefe’s is in rented space, but the Lances and Gaffneys closed in late December on the purchase of The Roost’s building.

“We have plans this year,” Lance said. “We’re going to build out a back patio with a rooftop deck” — projects he hopes won’t be quite as hazardous as their initial work on The Roost.

“We did a lot of the work ourselves, with some friends, but my buddy Josh almost dropped an 800-pound rock on me,” Lance said. “There were beer taps coming out of a giant rock slab behind the bar, and we were trying to pull it out, rocking it back and forth. I was underneath it and he was on top — and it suddenly came loose and dropped about an inch from me.

“There’s still a giant hole in our bar from where it shattered on the ground.”

If you go

THE ROOST
526 Main St., Longmont
303-827-3380
TheRoostLongmont.com

JEFE’S TACOS & TEQUILA
246 Main St., Longmont
303-827-3790
JefesLongmont.com