A Strategic Next Step for Boulevard Bottle Shop, and for the Communities We Serve

Boulevard Bottle Shop has officially been sold to a wonderful new local owner whose family brings deep experience operating some of Lakewood’s leading wine, beer, and spirits stores. That matters to us. It means the space Jess Barrand and Jennifer Maglieri built with so much care will continue in capable local hands, while allowing our team to move forward with a business structure that is stronger, more sustainable, and better positioned for growth.

What Jess and Jenn created in Lakewood was never ordinary. Boulevard was built from conviction, talent, sweat equity, and a real belief that customers deserved better beverage retail. That belief worked. They built a store people loved. But love for a store, while essential, is not the same thing as a durable path to long-term growth.

As we evaluated the future of our company, one truth became impossible to ignore. Our two downtown stores, LoDo and Capitol Hill, were producing the strongest momentum in the business, while Lakewood remained our most expensive location and our smallest contributor to total revenue. In our Jan. and Feb. 2026 comparison, LoDo and Capitol Hill significantly outperformed Lakewood, and both downtown stores continued growing under Jess and Jenn’s leadership while the Lakewood store remained constrained by its economics.

Why this decision made business sense

The beverage alcohol business has been operating in a tougher environment than many people realize. NielsenIQ reported that U.S. off-premise alcohol sales slipped in 2025, with beer, cider, flavored malt beverages, wine, and spirits all facing pressure, while broader industry analysis from NIQ described the category as struggling to achieve both value and volume growth.

Colorado retailers have also faced a more competitive environment after grocery-store alcohol expansion. In 2025, Colorado enacted legislation to halt further hard-liquor expansion in grocery and big-box stores specifically because lawmakers and industry participants said independent liquor stores had already been harmed by prior expansion of beer and wine sales in those channels.

On top of category-wide softness, household budgets across the Denver metro have remained under pressure. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that food prices in the Denver-Aurora-Lakewood area were up 3.4% year over year in May 2025, while overall CPI rose 2.2%, led in part by shelter costs. Separate Denver metro budget analysis found household spending had been rising faster than income since 2016, with housing, health care, education, and energy becoming less affordable. 

We are not attributing Boulevard’s outcome to any single policy or one isolated factor. This was a convergence of realities: softer industry demand, rising operating costs, more competition for off-premise alcohol purchases, and consumer budgets that have become more strained. Industry surveys in 2025 also pointed to rising costs, tariff uncertainty, and workforce pressures as reasons beverage companies were prioritizing productivity and margin protection over expansion for expansion’s sake.

Within that environment, the difference between our stores became more pronounced. LoDo and Capitol Hill benefit from stronger density, stronger foot traffic, and a broader overlap between in-store discovery, neighborhood shopping, and event-driven traffic. Those stores have responded accordingly. Under Jess and Jenn’s leadership, they have grown meaningfully and created a more resilient foundation for the business as a whole. Lakewood, by contrast, carried our highest fixed-cost burden and represented less than 10% of company revenue.

There was also a structural constraint. Under Colorado law, through Jan. 1, 2027, an eligible owner may hold a maximum of three total retail liquor store licenses. That meant keeping every location indefinitely was not a neutral choice. It would have limited our ability to invest, restructure, and grow in the places where the economics were clearly strongest.

What this allows us to do for customers

This move is not about retreating from Lakewood. It is about serving Lakewood differently, and in some ways better. Former Boulevard customers will continue to have access to our curation through free delivery through 2026, and they can connect directly with Jess and Jenn through live chat on our website for recommendations, product questions, and personalized service.

It also expands our ability to serve customers beyond the immediate footprint of one store. With our operations concentrated around two stronger-performing locations, we can more efficiently reach customers in Denver, Lakewood, Westminster, Aurora, and other nearby communities. That means broader coverage, stronger staffing, and a model that lets our team spend more time doing what they do best, helping people discover great wine, beer, spirits, and food.

Keeping our marketing dollars in the community

One of the most exciting opportunities created by this change is the ability to invest more intentionally in our Community Partner Program. Rather than sending more advertising dollars to massive digital platforms, we want to keep that money circulating in our own community by supporting the businesses, organizations, and neighborhood leaders who already make our local economy stronger.

Through this program, participating local businesses can refer customers to us, giving those customers a discount while generating referral revenue for the business. Charitable organizations can also benefit through community-driven purchasing that turns everyday sales into meaningful financial support. It is a simple idea with a big purpose, keep our marketing and advertising dollars close to home, reward trusted local relationships, and create shared value with great small businesses and nonprofits.

A better in-store experience at LoDo and Capitol Hill

This transition also gives us the ability to deliver more and longer tasting hours at our two downtown stores. With our resources and staffing more concentrated, we can create a stronger calendar of weekly tastings, feature more producers, spend more time educating customers, and make those in-store experiences more consistent and more accessible.

For customers, that means more chances to explore, learn, and connect. For our team, it means more room to do the kind of hospitality work that has always set Jess and Jenn apart. And for the business, it means investing behind the stores that are already showing the clearest path to sustainable growth.

The positive truth at the center of this decision

It would be easy to frame this story as a closing. We do not see it that way. We see it as a transition that protects what matters most: the future of Jess and Jenn’s leadership, the ability to pay people more fairly over time, the chance to serve more communities, and the opportunity to build a healthier business around the stores where customer demand is strongest.

Boulevard Bottle Shop started with two women and a dream. That dream was real in Lakewood, and it remains real now. The setting has changed. The scale of the opportunity has changed. But the core mission, better service, better curation, better treatment of customers and staff, remains exactly the same.

We are deeply grateful to the Lakewood customers who believed in Boulevard from the beginning. We hope you will continue letting us serve you, whether through delivery, through community partnerships, or with a short trip to LoDo or Capitol Hill for a tasting and a conversation. This is not the end of that relationship. It is the beginning of a stronger way to sustain it.