GLENWOOD SPRINGS • It’s just past 9 a.m., and the party is on at Sweet Coloradough.
Outside this blue shack, where a bus displays the company motto of “Awesome, Super Awesome, Ridiculously Awesome,” the parking lot is packed with people wanting to get a taste of the carnival-like scent that fills the air. That’s the scent of “hot action,” as goes the greeting here. That’s the scent from the kitchen, where the ladies report making between 2,000 and 3,000 doughnuts a day.
Inside, classic funk blasts from a color-changing speaker. Bright-colored Colorado swag fills racks and shelves — T-shirts, socks and hats for tourists and also for locals, because owner Aaron Badolato doesn’t see why locals, too, wouldn’t want to sport the red, blue and yellow of this state that he finds to be awesome, super awesome, ridiculously awesome.
“There’s not too many place I can go golf and ski in the same day,” says Badolato, a Colorado native but a relative newcomer to Glenwood. Here, his customers stop by during excursions built around the hot springs and slopes in town or nearby Aspen.
At the counter this morning, Badolato sports a Colorado cap with a rainbow.
“You guys hear about the free tequila?” he asks the couple who walks in, joining the line that moves fast but constant, like the owner’s jokes. (But seriously, cocktails are available, pairing with the doughnuts and sandwiches sold for breakfast and lunch. How about a $2 shot with that coffee?)
“If you get 36 doughnuts, you get a free one right now,” goes another greeting from Badolato.
“You gonna do a side salad with this?” he asks the buyer of the next dozen.
“You buying the rest of these doughnuts, brother?” he asks the next customer.
It is a delectable collection. No day-olds are sold here. That would go against the rules of “hot action.” The doughnuts must be eaten now, so all of that hot and doughy goodness melts in your mouth with the freshness of the frosting, be it strawberry, blueberry or lemon. The German chocolate is also popular. As is the apple fritter. As is the croughnut, the crispy, flakey marriage of cake and croissant bound by crumbly cinnamon and brown sugar.
Or one might opt for savory. The burritos and sandwiches are crafted with “quality, locally sourced ingredients whenever possible,” the menu promises, adding: “Everything made from scratch, by hand, with love, in the Rocky Mountains of Coloradough.”
Badolato, 40, opened Sweet Coloradough in 2013, shortly after moving to Glenwood Springs with his wife, Anne, and then-1-year-old daughter. Aaron and Anne first met at Aurora’s Wheeling Elementary and went on to spend their careers in Denver, he in financial planning, she in nursing.
The idea was to swap the busy city life with something slower in the mountains.
“We just wanted to settle down at our favorite vacation spot,” Anne says. “And we’ve been running, running, running ever since.”
That’s how her husband’s mind works, she says. Always running. And the concept of a bakery/deli/bar kept running in his head.
“I call him Midas,” Anne says, referring to the Greek king of mythology who turned everything he touched into gold.
Sure enough, on the first day of business, Aaron tallied 3,500 doughnuts sold. Lines out the door. In the seven years since, Sweet Coloradoughs have opened in Rifle, Carbondale and Snowmass.
Aaron’s mind keeps running.
“We’re gonna put a hotel on top of this building,” he says, showing a blueprint of seven units above the kitchen.
Yes, “this kind of turned into an animal,” he admits, thinking back to the slow life he and his wife envisioned.
“But it’s been good,” he says. “There’s a lot of smiles in this world.”
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