Soul Food Favorite CoraFaye's Closed After Fire, May Not Reopen

"I'm not sure at this point what I want to do," says Priscilla Smith, owner of CoraFaye's, one of the metro area's few soul-food restaurants. "The whole restaurant industry has changed."

On Sunday, April 14, a fire broke out around 9 a.m. near CoraFaye's kitchen; it was before any staff had arrived to begin prepping for service, and no one was injured. The Aurora Fire Department was quick to arrive and contain the flames, Smith says, but the building still sustained extensive smoke damage that could take several months to repair.

She believes the cause of the fire may have been electrical. "There's nothing to indicate it was anything else," she says.

Smith opened the original CoraFaye's in 2006 at 2861 Colorado Boulevard, where it operated for a decade; it appeared on an episode of Diners, Drive-ins and Dives in 2013.

Three years later, Smith moved the restaurant to 16251 East Colfax Avenue in Aurora. During the pandemic, she shuttered that location and moved once again to a former Village Inn at 15395 East Colfax Avenue, reopening in March 2021. But now, after nearly two decades of owning a restaurant, Smith is considering doing something else. "This not an era for business owners like it used to be," she says. The effects of the pandemic continue to make it harder to operate, plus "people came back a lot different. And who would have thought it's still so hard to hire good, quality people?"

In addition to the struggle to find staff, the increase in wages and food costs makes it hard to justify staying open.
From pushback on tipping to being forced to switch from plastic to paper to-go containers — another additional cost — there are many new challenges for current restaurant owners to contend with.

Before the pandemic, "you had fun, you made money, you were in a community," Smith says. "Now it's like the owners are the last ones to make a profit."

Since moving, "business has been up and down," she notes, but delivery continued to help boost revenue, as "a lot of people are still hesitant to go out." Over the last few months, things had started to pick back up — but the fire may mark the end for CoraFaye's.

"I'm still trying to decide after almost twenty years of this, what's next — if I should reopen or do something else. It kind of drains you. People really don't know how difficult running a restaurant is," Smith says. "Sometimes we make it look easy."

While she decides, she's told staff to file for unemployment and look for new jobs.

If CoraFaye's doesn't reopen, it will be a big loss for the metro area. From the fried chicken and catfish to the peach cobbler and banana pudding, we'll miss Smith's cooking and warm hospitality.