Longtime Wheat Ridge Butcher Shop to Close — Unless It's Saved by a GoFundMe

Westside suburbanites who were doom-scrolling Facebook on May 12 found the calamity their ids were itching for.

Wheat Ridge Poultry & Meats, the local butcher and grocery store at 29th and Depew, announced in a brief post: "CLOSED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE. HUGE SALE ON WEDNESDAY. All Food Must Go. 10 AM - SELL OUT."

The page was flooded with questions about why the landmark was closing and how customers could help. Wheat Ridge Poultry & Meats has been open since 1942 (when it was Ridge Valley Poultry) in its current location; the shop's parking lot is the pasture where the original owners kept their fowl, selling chickens and turkeys and eggs.

In its latest incarnation — the Bobitsky family bought the business in 2015 and are only its third owners — the shop offers fresh cuts of beef, pork, and chicken from local ranchers and farmers.

But it's not just a butcher shop. Wheat Ridge Poultry & Meats is a community nexus and a philanthropic asset to its neighbors. It opened the first community fridge in Wheat Ridge, offering free food and pantry items to those in need. Since 2015, it's donated more than ten tons of locally produced food to 24 food pantries, and donated more than 500 Thanksgiving and Christmas meals and 1,500 turkeys and hams to needy families at the holidays. It's delivered more than 5,000 hot meals to the unhoused in the community. And it donates food that would ordinarily be waste — bones and guts — to the tigers and fish at the Downtown Aquarium.

"If someone needs food and I have it at my shop, I want to get it to them," says Jessica Bobitsky. "If I have something that someone needs, I mean, food is a basic right."

It's no wonder the shop's neighbors reacted so quickly to the closing announcement.

Eventually, Jessica responded: "Unfortunately I can't keep up with everything since Rob's passing. I am out of options unless I hit the lottery."

Rob Bobitsky, her husband, died in March 2024, leaving Jessica with the responsibility of running the company while she was deep in grief. They both attended Wheat Ridge High School and had been together for 33 years, since Jessica was fifteen.

The loss of her husband wasn't Jessica's only tribulation. "In the last couple years, I've battled cancer," she says. "My father-in-law passed away. My son attempted to commit suicide, and I lost my husband. And unfortunately, now my MS is back in full relapse."

After Rob's death, Jessica discovered that the shop owed loans she wasn't aware of. She says she's made payment plans with all of their creditors, but she's also about to lose her family home, which her grandparents built.

So Jessica made the decision to close the shop, and on May 12 announced on Facebook that there would be an everything-must-go sale on Wednesday, May 14.

But the community began to rally.

Early May 13, a GoFundMe page was launched to raise money to save Wheat Ridge Poultry and Meats. But also this morning, Jessica Bobitsky met with the shop's nine employees and told them they should probably look into filing unemployment.

"They're my family, so it kills me to say, 'Guess what? You may have to go on unemployment because my life exploded,'" she tells Westword.

She hopes the GoFundMe will offer the neighborhood butcher shop a way forward. But she has another very real hurdle: According to the City of Wheat Ridge, Wheat Ridge Poultry & Meats owes the municipality about $87,000 in unpaid taxes, fines and fees totaling going back to 2022.

This story has been updated to include the amount the company owes the City of Wheat Ridge.

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