Meet Garret Nicodemus | General Manager

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

Hi Garret, can you walk us through the thought-process of starting your business?
We saw an opportunity to provide a place for the community to gather, eat, drink and be merry. Louisville is a special town and after everything that has happened specifically here the last few years, we wanted to build something that others could come enjoy together with us. Most of the ownership group has been involved in startups of some form or fashion so the idea of doing something new wasn’t as daunting. A key factor we have learned in starting the right way is making sure to have great support, team members and industry experts to lessen the learning curve.

Let’s talk shop? Tell us more about your career, what can you share with our community?
My managing partner and I have come to learn “career” and “experience” are probably intertwined.  We both have taken roads not quite clearly marked.  I earned my PhD in Chemical & Biological Engineering at the University of Colorado Boulder in 2009. At the time I was passionate about teaching and helped develop online educational materials that would “flip” the traditional lecture hall methods on its head and effectively improve student learning. By 2014 the opportunities to continue teaching were elsewhere and my family was happy staying in our community. A close entrepreneurial friend had convinced me to leap out of Academia for the first time in 14 years and startup a company. With our backgrounds in chemical engineering, we chose to attack the medical marijuana market and focus on creating products we would be proud to give to our grandparents. The market was so new, so exploratory and so crazy that the experience gained was invaluable. We shifted towards our strengths in facility and process designs and worked on projects all over the country, some beyond the borders. Unfortunately as it happened everywhere, COVID became an obstacle our company couldn’t rebound from and we ended that company in 2021. It was hard to grasp, knowing that everything you worked towards and sacrificed ended without a monetary gain or repayment of investment to family and friends that believed in the idea. It’s easy to set goals as a dollar sign, and unfortunately I believe we set our definition of success around this too often. After a year of trying to reprioritize myself and my family, the opportunity to take over a bar/restaurant presented itself in my community. I believed it would enable me to get more involved in Louisville through a forum and environment that we could create and foster. Some of my friends believed the same thing, so they invested in the opportunity, in me, and in the community of Louisville. And then we made it real.  My colleague and I just flipped a switch and next thing we knew we were open.  The process over the last few months has reminded me that while anything can be daunting or hard to imagine happening, its just a matter of time and money. You have to make the time, which can mean significant sacrifices where time used to be spent. And you have to find the money, whether its from friends, family, banks, or strangers. The hardest part after making those sacrifices and choices is acknowledging that they are yours to bear. You won’t make everyone happy, and it wont be easy to keep on track after going from zero to 100. So you have to find what makes you happy and hold that tight. You’ll find good people to be your foundation and keep it fun. And that’s what we believed we could be for others too in opening Rocky Mountain Tap & Garden. We hope we can provide a place for the community to gather, to interact through our engagement driven environment and to relax at their own convenience and pace. We can all use a little more community and support nowadays and we hope to be part of that here.

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.
My bucket list week with a friend would have to include heading into the mountains for an overnighter, potentially Breckenridge, Estes Park or Steamboat, just to show them what it feels like in a mountain town. A good hike around Rocky Mountain National or even the Flatirons can be rejuvenating and breathtaking at the same time. As a baseball fan or not, sitting in the upper sections behind home plate at Coors Field has to be one of the coolest views and experiences I can share. I would probably walk Pearl St. in Boulder for lunch, dinner and some beers just to share the fun and crazy culture that is alive in that town and some of the best food in the area.

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
We have to shoutout to the incredible team of Craft Kitchen Concepts who we partnered with and has been successfully building community around their Rooted in Avanti (Boulder) and Del Mar in Avanti (Denver) locations. Nicholas Keyser, Scott Ericsson, and Brian Hardy have been incredible in helping to get this place ready to rock and are an amazing ongoing team to work with on a daily basis.  All of the ownership team couldnt have made this happen without the incredible support of our families, spouses, kids, and friends who just lay the foundation for falling down and getting back up to keep the goals alive. They are amazing and don’t get the credit they ever deserve. And lastly, our patrons who have been nothing short of incredible in being patient as we begin, being supportive and positive in their feedback and continue to come back to help us build the community we dreamed about here. Thank you Louisville and those beyond that come to spend time with us.

Website: www.rockymountaintap.com

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