Next Door Kitchen & Bar closed on Pearl Street

BOULDER — Next Door Kitchen & Bar, a downtown Boulder restaurant concept co-founded by Kimbal Musk, billionaire Twitter Inc. owner Elon Musk’s brother, has “permanently closed” at 1035 Pearl St., according to a sign on the eatery door.

The restaurant — known throughout its dozen years in operation as the Kitchen Next Door, Next Door American Eatery and ND streetBAR — shut its doors at the Boulder location, along with one in Denver’s Central Park neighborhood, on June 27, according to Next Door’s website. 

Next Door, part of the Boulder-based The Kitchen Restaurant Group that Musk founded with chef Hugo Matheson, closed its Fort Collins and Denver locations this year, laying off its staff at both restaurants, according to media reports. 

Musk stepped away from management of the Next Door concept last year but remains involved with The Kitchen Restaurant Group.

A somewhat controversial figure in Boulder’s restaurant scene, Musk was the subject of an April 2020 Huffington Post article that accused The Kitchen Restaurant Group of failing to distribute emergency funds to employees, including those at Next Door, affected by the COVID-19 outbreak.

Emily Peck’s HuffPo piece claimed Next Door employees were not given access to the company’s “Family Fund,” which collects voluntary donations from workers’ paychecks to be used in times of crisis.

An unidentified former Next Door manager was quoted in the HuffPo story calling the fund “just a hoax.”  

The fund began in April 2018 as a way to support a Boulder employee who lost a child in a car accident. Over the years it evolved into a more structured program overseen by the Emergency Assistance Foundation, Musk told BizWest in 2020. 

“This is not a slush fund; this is a very modest fund,” he said. 

The Kitchen Restaurant Group received $10 million federal Paycheck Protection Program funding in 2020 and 2021, media reports show. It’s been a challenging few months in Boulder for the Musk brothers. Since buying Twitter Inc., now known as X Corp., last year, Elon Musk ceased operations at several office locations, laid off employees, and, according to several local lawsuits, stopped paying his bills.

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