Luna’s brightens Greeley nights

GREELEY — With a lot of moxie and riding the wings of a dream, the owners of Luna’s Tacos & Tequila are nearing two years of success in downtown Greeley.

The moxie comes from Ely and Samantha Corliss, who have worked in the hospitality and marketing industry in Greeley for 14 years and opened downtown’s Moxi Theater in 2013.

The wings come from Brian Seifried, who owns the growing Wing Shack restaurant chain.

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Together, they turned their mutual love of tequila, music and Mexican street food into a vibrant spot in the 117-year-old building west of the Moxi. Today, Corliss said, Luna’s boasts Northern Colorado’s largest collection of tequilas and agave spirits — nearly 200 brands on their shelves.

“We originally thought about a fast-food Illegal Pete’s type of vibe,” Corliss said, “but as we discussed the needs of the neighborhood we realized Greeley was ready for an elevated concept.”

A Denver native, Corliss came to Greeley in 2006 for school at Aims Community College and the University of Northern Colorado. He earned money through concerts and waiting tables at a bar Seifried owned. Corliss began publishing BandWagon magazine in 2011 and opened the Moxi two years later.

“The name came from the gumption and faith in the community it took to open the theater,” Corliss said. “A lot of people said Greeley wasn’t ready for a concert venue.” It also pays tribute to the Moxie Lounge in Seattle, but dropping the “e” had a lot to do with the theater’s sign. “We wanted it to read correctly both ways,” he said.

The Greeley Area Chamber of Commerce named Seifried its Entrepreneur of the Year in 2014, and Corliss received the same award in 2017.

Corliss had been eyeing the building next door to the theater for some time as a possible space to meet downtown Greeley’s unmet need for late-night food, he said.

“It was a market when it was first built, and a tailor lived upstairs,” Corliss said. “It was that until the ‘40s or ‘50s, and then it was a print shop where I used to get my concert posters printed. When we started looking at it, the Doubletree had been using the ground floor for a mock hotel room and office space before it opened the hotel, and we had some friends living in an apartment upstairs. I thought, ‘What a cool rooftop patio this would be.’ ”

Corliss reached out to Seifried, and they in turn took their idea to Bob Tointon, the former owner of the building and an investor in Moxi’s building as well.

“We’re very thankful for the Tointons,” Corliss said. “They’ve been very generous and had a lot of faith in our project.”

The Corlisses and Seifried closed on the building during the first week of 2018, and Luna’s opened in August after seven months of construction.

That name has several meanings, Corliss said. Luna is the name of his oldest daughter and of a crescent-shaped lake that used to exist in Lincoln Park. It also suggests moonlight, a late-night image appropriate for a late-night cantina.

Seifried brought his experience as a chef and Wing Shack entrepreneur to the project. Ely Corliss has experience in graphic design and talent management, while Samantha Corliss developed the bar program and serves as Luna’s manager and mixologist.

The main floor has about 3,000 square feet including a 70-seat dining room with “a big ol’ garage door for an open concept,” Corliss said, plus the kitchen and bathrooms, plus a patio facing the rear parking lot. Upstairs is a 1,500-square-foot indoor bar along with 1,500 square feet of patio space. The lower and upper patios are connected, Corliss said, “something that Greeley has never seen.”

One other design element was prompted by downtown Greeley’s warm-weather “Friday Fest” program, in which patrons can take liquor by the drink out onto the downtown plaza.

“Friday Fest has been a huge part of what we do,” Corliss said. “We just opened at the end of Friday Fest season in 2018, but we were here for the entire season in 2019. It brought so many people down to the plaza that we changed the box-office window in front, where we sell Moxi tickets, into a place where we can also sell margaritas right out of that window.

“Those Friday nights are absolutely our biggest night of the week, and it’s more than just immediate sales,” Corliss said. “It’s the exposure that the DDA (Downtown Development Authority) is bringing down here with all those events that let people know what a great, exciting place it is to eat, drink and play.”

The partners brought in East Coast native Chris Wornowicz to run the kitchen. “All of our hot sauces are made from scratch in the kitchen,” Corliss said. “We have respect for traditional Mexican flavors, but we’re taking it to the next level. We have a new taco every week, $1 street tacos every Tuesday, and $3 house margs on Margarita Mondays.”

There’s even a Sunday brunch, with churro French toast sticks, bacon-and-egg torta sandwiches and breakfast tacos.

No new locations for Luna’s are envisioned at this time,” Corliss said. “There’s no more taco and tequila joints in the works,” he said. However, Seifried acquired the space at 911 Eighth Ave. that had been Salzman’s Shoe and Boot Repair for 62 years until it closed in 2017. His plan is to open an eatery with a ramen concept. Not surprisingly, when the business opens this year, its name will carry the flavor of Greeley’s history: “Salzman’s Ramen.”

Editor’s note: This story has been updated to correct information about the ownership.