The restaurant they'd eventually open — the Preservery in RiNo — was a blend of the two: a place that combined a dining room, deli counter and gourmet market with a small music stage and a bar, even if it was less smoke-filled than originally planned. And all of this in an open and airy spot in a popular and still up-and-coming arts district. "It always had a mission-driven focus," says Whitney, adding that when the Preservery opened its doors in the spring of 2016, "it was all about food, music and community."
It had been a long and winding road for the couple to get to the point of opening those doors, and that road helped direct the Preservery's perspective as a business. After getting his Ph.D. in musical arts from the University of Colorado Boulder, Obe had become the development director for the Colorado Symphony, while Whitney had worked her way up through the food scene, most notably at Marczyk Fine Foods after a sting at Whole Foods. "Back when it was really cool to work there," she laughs, "before it became Amazon."
Obe's background "in non-profit and mine in food both informed a lot of our decision-making and focus in the restaurant," Whitney notes, listing a number of issues they worked to address through the Preservery, including advocating for fair wages and the associated minimum wage increases. "The industry always fights in the other direction, unfortunately," she says. "We even tried to dismantle the whole tipping system. But we were probably a little too early on that. These days, I think it might work, but back then, people didn't get it, and so that attempt didn't last long."
Still, the Arisses focused on pushing ethical business practices while at the same time creating a name for the Preservery with the quality of the food, drinks and welcoming ambiance. Their success could be measured not only by the growing customer base but also by recognition: Early in, it was named one of Westword's Most Promising New Restaurants of 2016 and Zagat's Twelve Hottest New Restaurants in Denver.
The First Pivot
Of course, the world changed with the pandemic — particularly for the service industry. "That was an agonizingly difficult time," Whitney recalls. "For the first few years of the restaurant, we'd been focused on balancing what good we could do in the community with the ability to make enough profit to stay open. All of a sudden, profit was off the table. So we sat down and thought, 'okay, so what can we do?'"Having a restaurant in the RiNo section of Five Points had always been a "stark contrast," according to Whitney. "It's extreme wealth and extreme poverty. We saw and experienced it with our guests, and with the people in the neighborhood. And we were seeing this huge surge of people experiencing homelessness at the start of COVID."
In December 2020, when another indoor dining ban went into effect, they finally decided it was time to just do something. "We've got this huge restaurant that we can't even fucking use, right?" she says with a laugh. "And this beautiful kitchen and this team of people we're desperate to keep employed and feeling productive and purposeful. So we created the Giving Meals program."
It was an idea that would eventually outgrow the restaurant: Guests could purchase a meal for someone in need, either outright or as a buy-one-give-one. "So if someone bought a Giving Meal on-site," Whitney explains, "they'd get something for themselves — a soup, for example — and that cost would also cover a meal for someone in need. It just kind of took off. People from across the community, and across the country as well."
Starting a Nonprofit
With the success of Giving Meals, it became clear that they needed to form a 501c-3. "We realized we'd need to do some meaningful fundraising if we were to keep this going," Whitney says. It took until early 2022 to gain that status, "and that was when Obe and I looked at each other and wondered if we really wanted to keep doing this restaurant thing. We were, by then, what felt like the other side of the pandemic, but things in the restaurant world were still brutally difficult. We were back to standard service, but absolutely not back to normal."In the midst of the pandemic, "I think there was more of a sense of solidarity for restaurants and restaurant workers," Whitney notes. "We saw this real shift in some of our guests. While so many of our customers were amazing and wonderful, there was also this rising tide of entitlement in some people, this complete lack of understanding as to how things worked and why prices were rising. Why people are important, why it's vital to pay them a living wage. It was a little heartbreaking."
And so, after a short but lauded time on the Denver dining scene, the Preservery shut its doors for good after one final Sunday brunch service on September 4, 2022, in order to focus on the nonprofit's mission.
That hasn't been easy, either. "We're still on the production side when it comes to food service, and costs are just bananas," Whitney says. "And probably going to get worse. It's like nothing we've ever seen. It's a challenge for us, but we're just heartsick for the industry. And hella validated that we got out when we did, because I can't imagine still fighting that fight right now. It's always been a tough business, but wow. It's new level now.
"We'd gotten so attached to the issue of hunger relief," she continues. "And not just hunger relief, but the need for good quality, ready-to-eat meals. Because when we went out into that landscape with a restaurant mentality — that we were just going to make good food and get it to the people who have the hardest time accessing it, we saw first-hand what some folks are able to access in a typical day. And of course, it sucks. It's garbage bags full of discarded bagels. Since we've started, it's only become worse, and god knows where it'll go next given our current political climate."
Giving Back Today
Supported by volunteers from the restaurant industry and funded by donations, the Preservery Foundation (TPF) now delivers hot, wholesome meals directly to tent encampments in and around the Five Points, downtown, Uptown and Capitol Hill neighborhoods every Tuesday — an extension of the Giving Meals they started in their restaurant. Each meal has a balance of protein, vegetable, starch and fat in order to maximize nutrition and fill stomachs effectively. TPF also hands out bottled water and packaged snacks, and provides similar supplies to outlets with Denver Community Fridges.Recently, TPF has expanded to include the management of the community garden at Garden Place Academy in Globeville, where the Arisses' daughter attended preschool. The GPA garden had fallen into neglect; with the encouragement of the school's parents and principal, TPF came in and brought the garden back to life, restoring it to a productive state and giving all the produce to the school community, as well as food-insecure residents of Globeville. As a bonus, the work not only re-beautified the site but created a space where students can learn about, grow — and eat —organic fruits and vegetables.
"It's daunting to think of the need out there," Whitney concludes. "It's a real drop in the bucket, what we do. It can make it hard to stay motivated sometimes. But for us, it's important that we still show up with a restaurant mentality. These are our guests. We're here to serve them. We show up not only to give them food, but also a smile. To acknowledge their humanity and see them as the people they are."
For more information and to get involved with feeding people in need, visit thepreserveryfoundation.org.
