Hot Dog Business Heats Up as Jim Pittenger Takes Back Biker Jim Name

Biker Jim is back.

Jim Pittenger never really left; he's been here the whole time. But now he’s reclaimed the Biker Jim’s brand and, twenty years after he first shook up the Denver food scene with a cart packed full of pheasant, rattlenake and reindeer, he's in the process of rebuilding his hot dog empire.

He walked away from Biker Jim's last summer in an acrimonious split with a partner he'd sold the business to in 2020, when the COVID pandemic gutted so many restaurants and food vendors. Pittenger created a new LLC and started Bikers and Bakers as a way to keep his own wheels turning, even as the hot dog company he’d signed over was sued for nearly a million dollars of unpaid bills for the Biker Jim's outlet in Ball Arena by Kroenke Sports Entertainment. Vendors began refusing orders,and the brick-and-mortar Biker Jim's on Larimer Street closed.

Meanwhile, Bikers and Bakers continues to offer hot dogs, sour cream waffles and other delicacies at Milk Market, and Pittenger has been able to pick up some catering and Colorado Convention Center gigs. And now, with summer on its way, he’s regained control of the name that Denver knows best and will soon be out and about again as Biker Jim’s.

After leaving the company he'd founded, Pittenger reviewed his contract with a trademark attorney, who said that the agreement only allows the company to use his name, likeness, history and images as long as he’s employed there. “Since my employment agreement was very specific," he says, "I took it back and sent them a cease-and-desist letter: ‘You no longer have rights to use the name Biker Jim, [take] all my pictures off of everything,’ which of course they ignored."

While he didn’t get an acknowledgement of the letter, he did get use of his name, as well as the hot dog carts and other kitchen equipment.


“I knew for a fact that he was driving the business so far into the ground all I needed to do was wait a little bit, which was basically what happened,” Pittenger says. “Within a few months, they got evicted from the restaurant, evicted from the commissary, just boom, we had an agreement where he supposedly gave me use of the name, which, anyway, don't really care about that.”

He hopes to have a new commissary kitchen up and running by May 1 and is working on fixing up the Biker Jim’s carts, which suffered some neglect and abuse as the company culture deteriorated in recent years. He’s got other things happening that he’s not ready to talk about yet, but is excited to get back out slinging dogs.

"We'll start bubbling up in places,” he says. “We're fluid, we're building back. We’ve got a couple of little projects in the works, [but] until they happen, they're not happening. In the meantime, just putting the commissary kitchen together, some catering, and 80 percent of our catering is hot dog catering. About 20 percent of it is some fun, fine-dining event. I'll do some dinners here and there that are pretty fun. Gimme a chance to spread my wings a little bit and make some interesting things.

“We lost all the big vending spots that we had, except the convention center," he adds. "It’ll take a minute before we get back to Coors Field or Red Rocks or any of those places, and I would love to do it. Those are fun places. There’s days that you make more friends than money.”


Pittenger's team means a lot to him — he calls them his biggest customers and his business's most valuable advocates — and he was excited to be able to bring back some of his old staff.  “A few crew [members] are still around, and are conscientious, are freaking great,” he says. “I had like three really loyal crew members that, when I came back and started, they were all in, but there was quite a bit of attrition over a couple of years' worth of that really sour treatment and care.”

But now Biker Jim is back. “I’m pretty loyal to my crew," he concludes. "I was able to, at one point, give thirty-plus people work. They were able to make their rent payment because I decided to sell hot dogs. How fucking cool is that? I was so happy to be able to do such a thing.”