Chook has ended its nearly three-year run at Stanley Marketplace. The rotisserie chicken restaurant, owned by Snooze co-owner Adam Schlegel and James Beard Award-winner Alex Seidel, closed up shop on Sunday, Feb. 26, after a tough winter.
“It wasn’t working the way that we had hoped to, or performing how our other stores have performed,” Schlegel said. “The marketplace is great, but perhaps what we do isn’t why people go there. We do a lot of takeout, so our other shops are entrenched in communities where you can swing in real quick, but Stanley is a little bit more of a destination.”
Hyoung Chang, The Denver Post
A Half Chicken Over Coals from Chook in Denver on Sept. 18, 2019. (Hyoung Chang, The Denver Post)
Schlegel and Seidel opened the Stanley Marketplace space as Chook’s third location at 2501 Dallas St., Suite 106, in Aurora in Dec. 2020, not long before the pandemic. Over the last six months, Schlegel said they’ve tried various tactics to boost business, like moving different managers over to the space to shake things up or new marketing strategies.
“Winters are always hard for restaurants, but this winter was enough for me to say the hill to climb is too much, you know, we have three good restaurants that we can’t put as much attention or time on when we’re trying to mend this situation,” Schlegel said.
“It’s kind of a sigh of relief that comes at a good cost, but that’s just the game we play,” he added.
Seidel and Schlegel opened Chook’s first location on South Pearl Street in 2018 and a second in the Hale neighborhood less than a year later. Last year, the duo expanded to Cherry Hills Village with a new restaurant at 2500 E. Orchard Rd.
“Eventually, it’d be great to see Chooks everywhere,” Schlegel said. “I drive across the state with my kids to soccer matches, and I would love to give them some healthy convenient options outside of the usual fast food.”
