Kelly Gregory waited more than 20 years to realize her dream of owning a food-service business or a restaurant. The pandemic gave her the opportunity to just that when she began operating out of the Dolores River Brewery kitchen two nights a week. By LNN News Director Deborah Uroda; Editor Zach Marqua
Transcript
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Dolores resident Kelly Gregory had dreamed
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about opening her own
restaurant for nearly 28 years,
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but the timing never seemed right
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until the pandemic finally
gave her the chance
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to make her dream come true.
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You’re watching the local
news network brought
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to you by Keesee Motors in
Cortez and FastSigns of Durango.
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I’m Wendy Graham Settle.
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As a teenager, Kelly Gregory
became a regular reader
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of Bon Appetit Magazine
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and tried as many recipes as she could.
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The obsession followed her
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through college where she landed one
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of her first food service jobs
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in the residence hall kitchens
at Colorado State University.
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She worked as a wedding
and catering manager
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for a Swanky Hotel in
Denver, found herself
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in various food service positions
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in restaurants and still dreamed
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of owning her own catering
business or restaurant.
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Her obsession with preparing
good food followed her
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when she became a nutritionist
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in a cardiac rehabilitation center
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and as a middle school
science teacher in Cortez.
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Then last summer, after the
pandemic hit she decided
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to try her hand at selling
some of her favorite condiments
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at the Dolores Farmer’s Market
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including salsa’s homemade hummus,
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and kimchi under the
Kelly’s Kitchen label.
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But her carrot cupcakes were
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to become the hands down, local favorite.
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I’ve read Bon Appetit Magazine for
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I think 30 years now.
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And so, I made this carrot
cake that was just incredible
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for several different weddings.
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And, so during the pandemic,
I hadn’t seen my parents
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for quite a while and it
was my dad’s birthday.
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Sorry, I’m going to get choked up.
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And so I made carrot cake, which he loved
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and I had some leftover
carrot cake cupcakes
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and they were building the playground
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over here in town. And I was like,
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what am I going to do
with these extra cupcakes?
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And I was like, Oh I’ll take them
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to the volunteers at the playground.
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And you know, people had them
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and they were like, these are amazing!
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And so I said, well,
maybe I can sell those
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at the Farmer’s Market.
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And then my niece started
working with me and she was like,
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I think we need something
more than carrot.
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You know, I like the carrot
cake, but you know what
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about like lemon or lime
or, you know, red velvet.
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And so then we started making a variety.
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Her first opportunity
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to open her own restaurant
came last summer
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when she started selling her wares
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at the Dolores River Breweries
Beer Garden that expanded
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to making tacos one night a week.
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And before she knew it, she
was opening a pop-up restaurant
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in the Breweries Kitchen two nights a week
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An opportunity presented itself
to kind of shift the model
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of our business a little bit,
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and open up our kitchen
to people like Kelly.
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And we go way back, to
explore the opportunities
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and the you know, the idea or the passion
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of perhaps, you know,
getting into a food truck
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or opening their own restaurant
or something like that.
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It’s like almost like a
starter, you know, like
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a test kitchen, if you will,
in pop-ups where all the rage
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and we’ve done this before
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in the past with a ramen kind of concept.
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And it was just a lot of fun.
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It also offered our clientele
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and our community kind
of a varied experience.
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We cook pizzas for six
days a week for 19 years.
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And although everybody loves pizza,
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it was nice to offer some options to that.
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Gregory serves up a menu of Thai food
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and sandwiches on what she
calls World Tour Wednesdays
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and a variety of tacos on Taco Thursdays.
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World Tour Wednesdays
also will feature cuisines
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of other countries as summer progresses.
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Gregory plans to expand
to three nights a week
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when the Breweries Beer
Garden opens in April.
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In the meantime, working as
an independent pop-up kitchen
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at the Brewery is just the
start of her dreams come true.
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Oh, it helped me actually
achieve this dream that I’ve had
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for a long time to have my
own food service business
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which a long time I thought
it would be a coffee shop,
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and then it was like, oh,
it’ll be a food truck.
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and what I needed was just
like that extra little, push
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or opportunity that kind of
put me over the edge to say,
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now I think I can do this
and I can make a go of it.
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You know, that can be my new career.
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If you’d like to see what’s on the menu
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at Kelly’s World Kitchen in
the Dolores River Brewery,
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visit kellyskitchendolores.com.
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Thanks for watching this edition
of the Local News Network.
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I’m Wendy Graham Settle.
