Meet Elio Sanchez | General Manager

We had the good fortune of connecting with Elio Sanchez and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Elio, is your business focused on helping the community? If so, how?
We believe we are helping Venezuelan community who make live in Denver by giving them the access to a Venezuelan Bakery in town but at the same time so far from our country where they can feel at home. In my personal opinion, the most challenging but at the same time amazing experience is the way we can reach american lifestyle culture through food and showing the way we, Venezuelans make bakeries. Colorado is a high tourist destiny where many people from around the world come either in summer time for hiking and camping or winter time during ski season. Bakeries in Venezuela are a meeting point for friends, acquaintances, family, work. Could be in the morning, lunch, afternoon or night time. It’s like bakeries are always there with the doors open for you, so we want to bring that to Denver, like Italians did with pasta or Japanese with sushi, we want to settle down Venezuelan bakery culture.

Can you give our readers an introduction to your business? Maybe you can share a bit about what you do and what sets you apart from others?
Keep high quality always! I don’t know if that is the first thought for every entrepreneur but for us number one rule. We have seen bakeries here normally opens at 6:00-7:00 am and close before 4 pm. We want to bring bakery store hours as we do in venezuela that normally we open at 6:00 am and close at 9:00 or 10:00 pm.

You will ask why so many hours? It is because Venezuelan bakeries are more like a premium artisan marketplace where you have Bakery department, pastry department, cake department, charcuterie area, etc. every product freshly baked, charcuterie freshly cut, pastries freshly made.

In our country If you want to buy groceries to restock you home you go to a supermarket chain. If you need to buy daily stuff you go to Bakeries. Probably our culture is kind of similar to Europeans countries like Spain, Portugal or Italy.

We as a team feel really proud to completed 1 year since opening back in January and being the first authentic Venezuelan Bakery in Denver. We still have so much to do in terms of productions and store improvements, it is a process especially when you want to set a new bakery culture.

Actually, our project idea started back in 2020 during COVID time. I took us 3 years to created from scratch the brand, from the colors to what kind of business we want to be. Language barrier was not a problem but learned a whole new system on how to operate business in this country was a slow and challenging process, like you are going to college to learn about something, so we can call those 3 years as an associates on how to operate a business in the US.

Being said that, the project in Denver, CO was already a challenge in many ways like the factor it’s never been a Venezuelan Bakery in town before, Venezuelan community is not that big yet and altitude tends to affect bread recipes. A recipe in Venezuela (sea level, a lot of humidity) won’t perfectly work in Denver ( altitude, dry weather, 4 different seasons).

Besides the Bakery as a retail store B2C (Business to customer) we are working on the other side of the project, the B2B development of the brand (business to business). We are working hard to make our products available and ready to go in groceries stores. We want to build a long term brand where people feel proud of!

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
If my best friend come to town week, we will eat breakfast of course at Aura’s Bakery. Go to cherry creek area, downtown, highlands! I really love sports so maybe go to a Nuggets game. Then pack our stuff, rent a 4×4 jeep and to the mountains. Pack some Cachitos and Tequeños for the trip (you can get some at the Bakery) drive on the I70 west, stop first at red rocks amphitheater, keep driving to all this beautiful towns like frisco, breck, aspen, glenwood springs. Drinks some artisan local beers. Hiking if is summer, ski if is winter. We really love Colorado lifestyle and the people son gentle, that’s why we chose this city to build our dream.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
Aura, my mother. Special mention to her because she is the heart of this project. She is Medical technology graduated in Venezuela, and she moves to the US in 2012 at first just to learn English as a second language. She came to Colorado and she just fall in love and stayed here. I was at college in Dallas during that time.

I am really proud of my mother because she left her comfort zone in back Venezuela when she decided to move here. It is not easy to move to another country, different language, different culture, not the type of food you are used to. And besides all that said she never lost the north on being a successful person here.

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/auras.bakery?igsh=dXB4OXVuMWI2ajl3

Image Credits
Aura’s team