Brandon DelGrosso and Trista Heileman (Photo by Matthew Schniper)
Provision Bread & Bakery (facebook.com/provisionbread) will soon open Downtown, in the former Machine Shop co-working space at 4 S. Wahsatch Ave. Though the business is an entirely new concept, the faces behind it are familiar from our existing food/drink scene: Brandon DelGrosso owns 12-year-old Switchback Coffee Roasters’ two locations as well as Lakeside Dawgs & Cones at Prospect Lake, and Trista Heileman has been Switchback’s head baker since it launched its Hillside neighborhood Helen Hunt Campus café in mid-2020.
Heileman’s gaining a co-owner title at Provision, where she’ll be in charge of a significantly sized baking operation (they earned a retail incentive grant from Downtown Partnership) that’s targeting wholesale customers in addition to retail patrons. She will house-mill organic, unprocessed whole grains and avoid preservatives or anything unnatural, putting huge emphasis on sourcing products from growers across the region and state. (More on that below.)
Product offerings will come on the menu as the operation gets open and adjusted to its new ovens and equipment, but will eventually include: naturally leavened bread loaf varieties, brioche buns, English muffins, bagels, croissants, scones, Danishes, muffins, cookies, hand pies and a limited list of sandwiches. They will also do special offerings such as hot dog buns around Fourth of July, which they’ll otherwise be making to supply Lakeside Dawgs.
There are no plans for pizzas, as they feel Downtown’s already well saturated with fine offerings. And DelGrosso will only serve Switchback’s drip coffees and some teas, not espresso drinks. That’s partly again because of existing area coffee shop density, but also for Provision’s quick-service model. “This isn’t like Switchback,” he says, “where it’s designed for people to sit” or maybe remote-work over a latte. “It’s going to be more grab-and-go, not as much of a community gathering space.” As the majority of the space will be devoted to the bakery, prep areas and cold storage, the front retail area and mini mercantile will have quite limited seating, although warm months will invite some patio seating as well.
El Chapin’s burger and shake truck (Photo by Matthew Schniper)
Now to the bit about the local-food emphasis. As in the coffee world where roasteries make direct-trade relationships, DelGrosso and Heileman prefer to truly know their farmers and ranchers, “which is a lot easier” jokes DelGrosso, “because it’s more of a 100-mile radius” versus coffee-growing regions internationally. (Technically they’ll source from as far away as the Western Slope, but his point is made.) The fact is they’ve already been working with a number of regional producers at Switchback.
For example, their ham, egg and cheese breakfast sandwich currently includes Larga Vista ham and green chiles, Sunshine Green’s Farm’s microgreens and Yoder Family Farms eggs. That’s why it commands a $10.50 price tag, because buying local and high-quality products means a higher food cost for Switchback too. As we said in State of Plate/5, “Food Fight” (csindy.com/stateofplate) we must support small farms and ranchers if we want to keep them alive, and vote with our dollars for the more sustainable and holistic food models we want to see.
DelGrosso tells me the story about trying to hire Heileman at his Hillside café after she’d spent a year working for their mutual friend David McInnis at industry-leading Nightingale Bread when it first opened. Her stipulation? She’d take the job only if they worked with local producers. The two had perfect culture fit on the matter. During the pandemic, he notes, they ran a pop-up grocery store selling local goods out of Switchback to meet their neighborhood’s needs. While “we watched a lot of farm friends go out of business… we built a relationship with Tap Root Cooperative back then.”
Provision will become a distribution hub for Hunt or Gather buying club, and it’s intentionally building out extra refrigerator and freezer space to assist with local CSAs and all the producers they intend to work with. They also plan to sell those goods to area restaurants, making it easier for them to connect with superior local ingredients.
Here are some of the other producers they’ll source from that by now should be familiar to Springs folk: New Roots Farm, Frost Farms, Nola Naturals Farms, Jones Farms Organics, Austin Family Farm, High Altitude Rhubarb and Rocky Draw Farms. (Fun fact: Rocky Draw uses horses instead of tractors, saying on their website: “We believe that using horses is more sustainable and better for the soil than using tractors, and let’s face it, it’s a lot more fun!’)
El Chapin double-patty cheeseburger (Photo by Matthew Schniper)
As for the name Provision, DelGrosso says it holds multiple meanings for him and Heileman. One is the literal translation, supplying food with Downtown residents in mind, a “provision for people in the city” who otherwise lack a nearby bakery. Another is being that storehouse for the growers and ranchers, a provision for them, too, symbolizing the connection to the land. There’s also an association of being “nutrient-rich and good for you” as well as a spiritual component, he says, “of believing God is our provision, and honoring him in everything we do.”
Follow Provision’s progress toward opening on their social media pages, and tentatively expect a later May opening for wholesale clients and June opening for retail.
El Chapin adds a burger brand
El Chapin (elchapinfoodtruck.com) the epic taco cart located outside Ranch Foods Direct’s market at 1228 E. Fillmore St., just opened their El Chapin Handmade Burgers & Shakes truck adjacent to its existing operation. RFD owner Mike Callicrate says they are providing the beef (just as they provide meats for El Chapin’s tacos), but the new trailer at the market’s rear is owned by Luis Guerra and his wife Paola.
They’re keeping it simple with fairly basic burgers and cheeseburgers and offering hand-cut fries cooked in RFD’s beef tallow. Buns are coming from The Sourdough Boulangerie and shakes are made with Anne & Mann’s Homemade Ice Cream.
Food news in brief
• Catch early bird ticket rates until June 1 for the revived (since pre-pandemic) Taste of Pikes Peak (tasteofpikespeak.com), moving to an outdoor venue this year: downtown Colorado Springs, outside the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Museum along South Sierra Madre Street. The huge foodie event benefits Colorado ProStart (corestaurant.org/colorado-prostart). Relatedly, ProStart students from District 11 Odyssey ECCO School won a gold medal at the The Colorado ProStart® Student Invitational state-level competition in mid-March. In May they will travel to Washington, D.C., for the National ProStart Student Invitational to compete for scholarship money.
• Taste of Tri-Lakes Cares 2023 (tinyurl.com/TLC-taste23) will take place from 5:30 to 8 p.m., Tuesday, May 9 at Boot Barn Hall at Bourbon Brothers (13071 Bass Pro Drive): “Modeled after the Food Network’s television show Chopped... the goal is to showcase how ordinary items from the
food pantry can be transformed into tasty and unusual dishes.”
• Food Trucks Against Homelessness (foodtrucksagainsthomelessness.com) and Westside Cares (westsidecares.org) are seeking food trucks interested in partnering to provide “meals, resources, and human connection to our houseless community.” They’re also accepting a wide variety of other donations, listed on their website.
• Cowboy Star (cowboystarcs.com) just released its spring menu. New plates include a Pacific halibut entrée with black truffles and lemon oil over spring pea risotto, plus a new foie gras starter presentation, which hosts a Sauternes gelée, blackberry and rhubarb.
Matthew Schniper is the former Food & Drink editor and critic at the Indy. You can find expanded food and drink news and reviews at
