On Feb. 5, The Tavern Carbondale opened its doors for its official soft launch.
The business, which moved into the former La Raza establishment, is one of many businesses run by Jeff and Ashley Moerke, including The Tavern Kitchen and Bar and Il Piggio in Snowmass Village. The new locale is a place where Jeff hopes to provide an air of affordability, good food, and consistency to the community, all while they work to expand their Tavern brand across the state and country, including at the former Blake Street Tavern in Denver and with a planned Las Vegas location, still to be unveiled.
In discussing the upcoming endeavors, Jeff expressed deep gratitude to the Carbondale community, whose feedback he has prioritized on business hours, how the food on the rotating menu should look, Happy Hour times and more.
“The Tavern brand has expanded. We have a Las Vegas location opening soon, and Denver is up next — Carbondale is one of my favorite communities,” Jeff said. “We’ve been working on changing everything around, from us being able to facilitate ourselves more to a local presence, as opposed to just tourists, which has been a breath of fresh air. Listening to the community and their wants and needs is where we’re at currently.”
He added that the collaborative nature of the Carbondale business scene has been incredible compared to other locations where they’ve opened.
“The tight-knit community of Carbondale, not just from the customers, but also your restaurant base, has just a different feeling of welcomeness and an air of ‘Let’s work together to make sure that when people decide to come down to Main Street, that they have a great experience, whether it’s with you tonight, or us tomorrow,’” Jeff said.
Coming from a corporate background, Jeff sold his original business in 2019, right before COVID-19 hit. He and his family eventually started doing business in Aspen, initially hoping to open a food truck alongside their clothing brand Harper & Hudson Gear, which was named for their two children and originally located near the Silver Queen Gondola. Due to zoning and permitting issues with the local government in Aspen, Jeff said that while they were able to serve a good crowd, the setup was limited.
“Long story short, the city [of Aspen] has more rules than anything. So we took the iconic popcorn cart idea into account, but I wanted to serve alcohol, which meant a lot of back-and-forth on the rules,” Jeff said. “So I built a cedar shed that had to be under 50 square feet to avoid paying all these astronomical taxes right out of the gate. Within a few months, we had a line out the door, had to shut the gates daily, and were running out of food because we had enough storage to supply everybody who was coming to get it. Everybody kept telling me, ‘You should open a space up here. [This] concept is great.”
Since moving into a space in Carbondale, Jeff said he has been building relationships with local ranchers and other local food distributors to give back to the economy, in addition to maintaining the “Carbondale Main Street energy” with live music and other events, even on days when everywhere else might be closed, by remaining open daily.
“We do new menu printing every six months, where we remove the least reviewed item from each rotation and change it out with something new,” he said. “We’re working with local ranchers to source seasonal produce, which can be challenging, and we’re starting to use local meat from Carbondale. So, at the end of the day, some of that would contribute to our big changes as we give back to the community by purchasing from the community and keeping it as local as possible.”
More is in store for Tavern. For more information, taverncarbondale.com or follow @taverncarbondale on Instagram.