The Lost Art of the 2 a.m. Coffeehouse

When I moved back to Denver in 2023 after five years of being away, the news hit me harder than I could have expected: My favorite midnight cafe was still alive and well, but now it closed at 6 p.m. Utter disaster for a night owl like me.

Despite Denver’s growing identity as a coffee city, its late-night coffee scene has become less nocturnal. Gone are the days of having several options for posting up with a cup of joe at 1 a.m.; even the classic late-night establishments like Stella’s Coffee Haus have reduced hours in recent years.

It’s no secret that the pandemic damaged customer bases for all types of service establishments, but it may not be the only factor pushing closing times earlier and earlier.

Like many businesses, Hooked on Colfax, near City Park, was forced to slash hours during the pandemic and began closing at 6 p.m. Now it has pushed closing time to 8 p.m., but even that can be a stretch, says owner Malissa Spero, who opened the shop with her husband in 2005. COVID not only stopped customers from coming in, she notes, but also disrupted the communities that had been cultivated over years in the cafe’s spacious basement.

Throughout high school, I could often be found at Hooked on Colfax until it closed at 10 p.m. It’s where I would go when my productivity plummeted or I needed neutral ground to meet with a group. Often I’d just sit and talk with friends, feeling older than we were. It was a hub for eclectic interest groups, funky wall art and students cramming in words before midnight deadlines, and its massive booths were the perfect place to gather and bemoan the college application process.
“A lot of the groups we used to host scattered to the wind,” says Spero. “There really wasn’t the infrastructure [for community] anymore.”

Maintaining late-night hours at any coffee shop presents a range of concerns for both customers and employees. Business is slower, employees don’t want to work graveyard shifts, and if there isn’t enough customer traffic, safety can be a concern.

Post-pandemic, the customer base at Hooked on Colfax has started to build back up, and groups are returning to make use of the space through events like poetry readings and ukulele jam sessions, but Spero says that she still doesn’t see closing time moving past 8 p.m.

The Mile High City holds a rich history of late-night coffeehouses, whether it's the ’70s era of beatnik cafes or some of the grungy yet adored ’90s spots like Muddy Waters and Paris on the Platte.

Spero notes that such coffeehouses were the inspiration behind opening a cafe of her own. “A city can feel very lonely and hard without these third spaces,” she notes, referencing a sociology term coined by Ray Oldenburg, who described ‘third spaces’ as communal areas for people to gather outside of work and home.

Any insomniac will also be familiar with the Bardo Coffee House, which Chris Graves opened at 238 South Broadway in 2010. It now has additional locations in Lakewood and Wheat Ridge.

Graves felt that Denver had lost some of the late-night coffee culture he grew up with, and he hoped the Bardo would fill that gap. For him, third spaces are “a place that is not home and is not work, but yet you feel like you have some ownership.” For the first two years of its existence, the Bardo stayed open until 4 a.m., which Graves admits was too hard on his staff. Closing time on South Broadway has been midnight ever since.

Although he acknowledges the difficulty the pandemic caused for all restaurants, Graves has noticed another shift affecting the Bardo’s hours: a changing demographic. “Yes, we have some night owls, but it seems like night owls are not like what they used to be,” he explains. “A lot of the late-nighters who were really late-night people were bohemian artist types. Creative types. You know, the people who generally can't afford to live in Denver any longer.”
Spero has noticed a similar change in the areas surrounding Hooked on Colfax, which sits in between Congress Park, City Park and Park Hill. Mentioning increasing property prices, Spero says her customer base is older than it used to be, with more families and less nightlife in the area.

There's been a shift in how the cafe spaces are used, too. Graves remembers a time when he would meet his friends at Muddy’s because no one had a cell phone (his pager served him just fine, he adds), and a coffee shop was a reliable rendezvous point to find his usual crowd. “Weird late-night adventures,” he calls them.

Conversation itself has changed, too. Rarely do customers sit down at a table without some type of screen in between them, and the boom of remote working culture has fundamentally altered the way coffee shops are used. “More people come in to get some work done or study rather than coming to meet all their friends and hang out,” Graves says. “Most people come with a purpose.”

Hooked on Colfax works to nurture both productive and communal spaces. On one side of the shop is a section filled with outlets, a long counter and massive booths for students to fan stacks of notes across. On the other side are smaller, more conversation-ready tables close to the counter to encourage socializing. At one time, customer-made signs banning the use of computers hung on the walls.

With many shops reducing hours to afternoon closing times, it's a good reminder that late-night coffee shops have never been lucrative and are tied to the hours with the most frequent customers.

“No one is getting rich selling coffee,” Spero notes, highlighting a dilemma many coffee shop owners face. The choice to stay open late is a delicate balance between keeping a business profitable and maintaining a space for the community it serves.

Graves also indicates that the Bardo’s late hours are not necessarily a financial decision. At one point, he tried bolstering sales by getting a liquor license and having nine different taps so his evening customers could enjoy a beer or a latte in the same space, but no amount of food or wine changed the fact that late hours are never the most profitable.

Instead, Graves and Spero cite their own history with cafes in Denver as their main motivation for keeping doors open late.

“I think there are some things more important than money,” Graves says. “It costs a little bit to have it open late, but I'm fine with that.”

Coffee shops react to their customers, and as a nation, people are spending less and less time together. Despite our screens, we need third spaces — the ones that give us the zing of a late-night conversation or keep their doors open when many jobs have become fully remote.

While I miss my 2 a.m. haunts dearly, the most relevant question might not be why hours are being reduced, but what we as customers value about our coffee shops — and whether we have the time for weird late-night adventures.