Veteran Roaring Fork Valley restaurateur Ryan Sweeney knows that sometimes he needs to put his personal business views aside and listen to his customers.
Sweeney was confident in late 2021 that he and business partner Jenna Endsley’s Bull and Buck restaurant would be a nice complement to a pretty stable lineup of eateries in Basalt. But after giving it a go for two years and not really catching fire, they decided it was time for a change. They toyed with the idea of reviving Ryno’s — a pub and pizzeria that operated in Aspen for seven years until the building where it was located was demolished.
Sweeney and Endsley put out feelers via social media and found overwhelming support for bringing Ryno’s to Basalt. They conducted an informal survey asking people if they should revive the old Aspen restaurant and, if so, what people wanted.
“People said, ‘We want pizza, burgers and pitchers of beer,’” Sweeney said. “The feedback was, give the Ryno’s feel to Basalt.” Parents also relished the thought of a family-friendly restaurant where kids could stay busy with arcade games.
So the partners honored a booking for a private event at Bull and Buck on the last day of September, then worked throughout October to transform the interior of their space at 305 Gold River Court on Two Rivers Road into a pub. Ryno’s officially returned to the valley in November.
The site has a spacious bar, plenty of seating and a front-window view of activity downtown. The menu features a lengthy list of salads all for $20 or less, 12-, 16- and 20-inch specialty pizzas, pub classic sandwiches from $13 to $23 and a kids menu where everything is $7. They are open seven days per week for lunch and dinner.
Sweeney found that a lot of customers are people who used to live in Aspen and frequented the pub there. They migrated downvalley, some starting families, and have created a good customer base.
“They’re not coming to us,” Sweeney said. “We’re coming to them.”
The accessibility to families and moderate prices have also attracted new clientele who were unfamiliar with the Ryno’s in Aspen, he said. The pub and pizzeria have been well received, though some people still yearn for a $3 pint of beer and cheaper food prices. Sweeney said they are trying to hold prices down as much as possible and still turn a profit. As anyone who has shopped for groceries can attest, food prices have soared in the post-COVID world, he said, and restaurateurs don’t have some magical relationship with wholesalers that keep prices down.
The menu is close to what Ryno’s offered in Aspen. One adjustment was getting used to the compressed hours. Ryno’s chills out by 9:30 or 10 p.m.; the pub’s kitchen was open in Aspen until midnight and the bar until 2 a.m.
“We follow demand,” Sweeney said.
Despite the early hours, Basalt has a fairly robust restaurant scene. Restaurants with bars showed steady, slow growth from 2014 through 2019, according to town of Basalt sales tax reports. The COVID year of 2020 was tough for many businesses, but 2021 brought a boom. Sales vaulted past the level set in 2019. Growth since 2021 has been slow and steady again. This year sales were up 3.5% year-over-year through August sales tax collections.
Sweeney said it’s much preferable to deal with too many customers than too few. He’s found it odd that some people have welcomed them to Basalt as if they are newcomers. “It’s kind of frustrating when you’ve been here for two years,” he said.
Ryno’s experienced a strong run in Aspen until COVID hit. The pub didn’t have a chance to hang in there until the surge of business fueled by urban escapees swept through Aspen and other mountain towns. Aspen real estate mogul Mark Hunt decided to demolish the Bidwell building in spring 2020 so Ryno’s and other tenants were forced out. The project has progressed at a snail’s pace ever since.
Sweeney said he wasn’t able to compete against other restaurant groups in Aspen, where there is more demand for space than supply, allowing landlords to jack up rents.
“I was never going to be able to find another place in Aspen,” Sweeney said.
Endsley, who worked for him at Ryno’s, wanted to partner with him in other restaurants so the duo started Bull and Buck in Basalt and the Brass Anvil, a steakhouse in Carbondale. Ryno’s was gone but not forgotten.
“I held that concept in my back pocket,” Sweeney said.
He said the restaurant business remains challenging, despite his years of experience in the industry. The experience with Bull and Buck reinforced to him that what he thinks a community could use isn’t always what members of the community want.
In addition to the restaurants in Basalt and Carbondale, Sweeney remains a partner in the Silver City Aspen, which bills itself as a mountain saloon where the Old West is still winning. Sweeney, a resident of Missouri Heights, said he doesn’t need to travel much to Aspen to oversee Silver City because of the good management in place. He and Endsley focus on the midvalley businesses. She excels in human resources-related duties. He’s a numbers guy who handles the ordering and other operations.
Their lease, with options, provides up to 13 years in Basalt. Securing stability for that long is nearly impossible in Aspen, he said. He’s looking forward to a good, long run with Ryno’s in Basalt.