Biker Jim’s Gourmet Hot Dogs has closed its standalone restaurant on Larimer Street near Coors Field and won’t return to the baseball stadium next year, its owner confirmed Tuesday.
An eviction summons was posted on the door of the casual dining spot, at 2148 Larimer St., listing parent company Worldwide Hot Dogs as a defendant. Andrew Soulakis – who took over the company from its founder, “Biker” Jim Pittenger, in 2019 – said the summons was for another property while confirming the closing of both spots.
“We are hoping to continue Biker Jim’s in a new location elsewhere,” Soulakis said without sharing specifics, only that he was “voluntarily” leaving the building. He blamed the closure on homeless people in the neighborhood and near the restaurant.
The closure was made public over the weekend by Pittenger in a since-deleted post on Biker Jim’s Facebook page.
Jim Pittenger, of Biker Jim’s Gourmet Hot Dogs, prepares his famous hot dogs in this photo from 2018. (Helen H. Richardson, The Denver Post)
“My heart broke a little bit more last week as I drove by and saw the sign (on the building) had come down,” wrote Pittenger, who left the company earlier this year after an acrimonious split with Soulakis.
Soulakis said he’s the one who deleted the post: “[Pittenger] does not have the ability to speak for the company,” he said.
The saga of Biker Jim’s has been as wild and unexpected as the hot dogs themselves, some of them made from reindeer, ostrich, rabbit and rattlesnake meat.
Pittenger began selling his creations from a cart in 2005, making fans out of personalities like Anthony Bourdain and chef Andrew Zimmern. He launched the Larimer Street location before the Colorado Rockies home opener in 2011.
But Biker Jim’s took a hard hit during the pandemic, and Pittenger traded his stake in the business for shares in a fuel additives-turned-hand sanitizer company run by Soulakis. Under Soulakis, Biker Jim’s expanded a wholesale operation into King Soopers stores with the goal of going national. Biker Jim’s also had a presence at Coors Field and Ball Arena.
Pittenger has been outspoken about the misdirection the restaurant has taken since then under Soulakis, who he had known for about 12 years through the food truck business.
Employees complained they weren’t getting paid, he said. The rent was late. The menu moved toward safer bets like brat dogs and “pit-beef” sandwiches.
Soulakis told The Denver Post in July that he didn’t want to discuss the details of the situation. “I’m not interested in getting into any sort of he-said-she-said,” he said then. “Jim has his reasons for wanting to step away, and we respect Jim’s decision to do that.”
Last year, Ball Arena’s ownership removed Biker Jim’s from the venue and sued the restaurant for failing to pay for a three-year sponsorship contract amounting to $868,000. The ensuing fallout led Pittenger to formally leave the restaurant he had started.
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The Colorado Rockies on Tuesday confirmed that the Biker Jim’s concession won’t return to the stadium when baseball games start up again in April 2025.
Soulakis said the decision to close the brick-and-mortar location on Larimer came down sometime in the last three weeks. “We really appreciate all the customers over the years,” he said, before pointing to issues such as people sleeping by the restaurant’s vestibule or harassing customers. “We are very disappointed with what’s happened to the neighborhood.”
Pettinger, 67, hoped Biker Jim’s would one day provide his retirement. Now, “the name doesn’t grant the same kind of generosity,” he said.
He’s currently running a pop-up kitchen called Bikers and Bakers at the Denver Milk Market, located just half a mile from the shuttered Larimer restaurant.