A former head brewer and investor in Live Slow Brewing, the beer-and-bowling concept in Wheat Ridge that reportedly raised $850,000 but never opened, now accuses a founder of stealing company cash and wasting it on trips to Las Vegas and collectible figurines.
Alan Simons is an experienced brewer who spent seven years with Backcountry Brewery in Frisco and another seven leading the beermaking at Dry Dock Brewery in Aurora. In 2022, he left the latter for Live Slow, which was supposed to open that fall at 2625 Kipling St.
“I reached out to Grant (Babb) and asked if they were looking for a brewer, and the response was, ‘Maybe,’” Simons recalled in an interview with Westword that year. “So we met over the course of a few months, talking and hanging out and having beers.”
Simons now says that Live Slow’s founders, Babb and Joe Malouff, gave him a 10% stake in the company in exchange for loaning it $50,000. Simons claims that he and other investors were told that Babb and Malouff would also be investing their own money, which wasn’t true.
“Babb did make an initial contribution of $50,000, but did so by converting funds belonging to Joyride Brewing,” according to a lawsuit Simons has filed against Babb and Malouff.
Joyride, which is in Edgewater, blamed Babb for its bankruptcy in 2023 and sued him for theft. The two sides settled confidentially last year and Joyride emerged from bankruptcy.
Simons says that five investor groups loaned $850,000 to Live Slow, allowing it to begin work in early 2023 at 2625 Kipling St., where Paramount Bowl operated between 1954 and 2019. The brewery-to-be also borrowed money from On Tap Credit Union, according to Simons.
At Babb’s request, Simons guaranteed that loan and a second loan for a forklift, he says.
“Due to constant delays, for reasons that ranged from supply chain to zoning issues, among others, the project stalled during the summer of 2023,” Simons’ lawsuit states.
Meanwhile, the company’s On Tap account was overdrawn by $60,000, he recalls. That is when Simons reportedly learned that Babb was spending Live Slow money on Herman’s Hideaway, a venue on South Broadway that Babb co-owned. Simons decided to tell other investors.
“The defendants were against advising the investors,” Simons says of Babb and Malouff, “but ultimately agreed to inform them of the embezzlement and misappropriation.”
“At that meeting, Babb and Malouff attempted to divert attention away from the misdeeds by focusing instead on getting the business open and moving forward. The investors had many questions, but the defendants did not have many, if any, satisfactory answers.”
When the investors pressed Simons for more information after the meeting, he showed them a spreadsheet of transactions from the On Tap account. As a result, he was fired for disclosing “confidential information,” in the company’s words, to Live Slow investors, he says.
Simons’ lawsuit alleges that Babb spent $150,000 of Live Slow’s money on personal expenses, including “multiple trips to Las Vegas and thousands of dollars’ worth of Funko Pops” figurines between January 2022 and September 2023. So, Malouff purportedly fired Babb.
“After recently discovering that Mr. Babb misused some of Live Slow’s funds, Live Slow removed him as a manager and an employee,” the company told Law360 in a November 2023 statement. “The actions Mr. Babb appears to have taken were neither condoned nor approved by Live Slow and instead were unilateral decisions made by him and him alone.”
But Simons claims that Babb was not actually fired and was seen working at Live Slow later that month. Meanwhile, it fell on Simons to repay the On Tap loan and the forklift loan.
“As a direct result of the actions by both the defendant Malouff and the defendant Babb, the plaintiff has been damaged in excess of $200,000 and continues to incur damages based on their mismanagement,” according to Simons’ lawsuit, which was filed on Oct. 3.
The brewer is suing Babb and Malouff for theft, fraud, conspiracy, unjust enrichment, breach of contract, negligence and conversion. Through his attorney, Zachary Westerfield with the law firm Westerfield & Martin in Denver, Simons declined to discuss his time at Live Slow.
“I cannot comment to the specifics of Mr. Simon’s accusations due to non-disclosure with Live Slow Brewing,” Babb said on Tuesday, “but can comment that his accusations are wildly false and my actions during my time with Live Slow were well within my power per the company’s operating agreement and were not in any way fraudulent or deceptive.”
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