The customers aren’t here to mourn. Inside the restaurant, things remain as they always were: servers greet customers warmly as they take their orders, people mingle among themselves and a child darts between tables before being ushered back by their parents. For the time being, the Breakfast Inn remains a hub of community and energy.
After nearly half a century serving the people of Denver, Breakfast Inn, a local southwest Denver mainstay, is closing its doors on June 8. The closure was announced by the Breakfast Inn’s owner, Dave Frieder, via its Instagram page on May 18.
“It comes with great sadness to share with the community that the BI will be closing permanently,” Frieder said. “After a year of fighting the good fight, our lease was not renewed and the property has been sold.”
The Breakfast Inn first opened its doors in 1976 and, for 49 years, has been a reliable option for many Denverites for breakfast and lunch. Despite its unassuming and unfussy location, Breakfast Inn is well known for its sweet cream pancakes among a host of other options.
The aesthetics of the Breakfast Inn are firmly rooted in history. The walls are lined with photos of Americana, with many portraits of trains and locomotives. These images are inextricably linked to an iconic diner fixture, a model train whose tracks run the length of the walls, passing above the guests as they eat.
“My parents used to take me here,” said one customer. “It’s just been a family gathering place for so long.”
Now, that sense of history, and the history the Breakfast Inn itself has made, are coming to a close, and many Denverites who have fond memories associated with the restaurant are feeling the loss.
“I’ve come here for forty years,” said a different customer. “It’s another of the usuals shutting down. It’s the loss of another place where you can just sit down and get something simple.”
Many people with ties to the Breakfast Inn associate it with the word “family.” Customers and employees alike expressed a strong sense of community as a result of their experiences at the diner, both with the people they came with and those they met there.
“It’s like a family,” said Kellie Perkins, a server working at the Breakfast Inn for nearly a decade. “I’ve worked with April [a fellow waitress] for ten years. My husband works here too. I get to work with my best friends and my family.”
The Breakfast Inn served as a community space for many, and with its closing, they lost that common space.
“This is where a lot of people meet,” Perkins said. “We got a group of guys that meet every Friday, and they meet almost every day. [The closure] is going to be really sad.”
The closure of the Breakfast Inn comes amidst a rough period for Denver’s restaurant industry over the past several years. In January, the Denver Post reported that the total number of operational Denver restaurants had decreased by 22% between 2021 and the end of 2024. Many of these closures have been locally run spots, similar to the Breakfast Inn, beset by issues ranging from the aftershocks of COVID to increasing costs of doing business.
Even in its last weeks of service, the Breakfast Inn is still full of life and comfort. Waiters speak warmly with customers about their experiences with the restaurant. Patrons come with a wide range of familiarity: regulars who have been eating there weekly or even daily, people with fond memories returning and people who have never been and want to try it while they still can.
“We would love to see every single person who has been through so much with us before we close, so please come by to say goodbye and get some of Liborios green chile one last time,” Frieder said. “I thank everyone for the privilege of serving you for most of my professional career, I will certainly miss what the BI means to the community.”
The Breakfast Inn is located at 6135 E Evans Ave. and is open from 7 a.m. to 2 p.m. until June 8.
