Frank Day, a Boulder restaurateur who was responsible for creating several national chains and for helping to jumpstart the craft beer industry in Colorado, has died at 93.
“We are saddened to confirm the passing of Frank Day… after a brief illness. He touched the lives of many, and his absence will be deeply felt,” Day’s company, Concept Restaurants LLC, said in an emailed statement Friday. “Our thoughts are with his family, friends, colleagues and all who knew him.
“The family will provide further information in due course, and we ask that their privacy be respected during this difficult time,” the company continued.
Day was born in Colorado but raised in Chicago, before attending Harvard University and then moving back to this state in 1970. He got his start in the restaurant industry in Boulder two years later when he opened the Walrus Saloon, which would last for 46 years as a beloved University of Colorado student watering hole. Four years later, he opened the first Old Chicago, a pizzeria and beer bar at 1102 Peart St. that would later become one of his most well-known and far-reaching successes.
Over more than five decades, Day and his wife, Gina, built the company into a titan of the Colorado restaurant and hotel scene, with dozens of concepts and properties that included Jose Muldoon’s, Hotel Boulderado, the Table Mountain Inn in Golden, The Denver Chophouse, Humboldt Kitchen + Bar, Boulder Social, Stout Street Social, and the Walnut Brewery. Gina Day also became a majority owner of Boulder Beer Co., a legacy brewery in the city.
The Walnut, founded in 1990, was Boulder’s first brewpub (meaning it was a restaurant that also made its own beer) and would go on to serve as the model for Rock Bottom Restaurant & Brewery, which opened its first location on Denver’s 16th Street Mall in 1991. The location, which is still running, is in what was then known as the Prudential Building; Prudential’s logo and slogan, “A piece of the rock,” was the impetus behind the name of the brewpub.
Rock Bottom was one of the first brewpubs in Denver, becoming an early competitor for John Hickenlooper and the co-founders of the Wynkoop Brewing Co., which had opened in 1988.
An investment firm called Centerbridge Capital Partners purchased Rock Bottom, Old Chicago and other brewery and restaurant businesses in 2010 and rolled them into one company. At their height, the two chains ran nearly 200 locations in multiple states.
Charlie Papazian, a longtime Boulder-area resident who co-founded the Great American Beer Festival, the American Homebrewer’s Association and the Brewers Association, and who helped ferment the craft beer industry, said Boulder has now “lost part of its soul.”
“Frank Day’s business ventures and charitable endeavors, both local and national, have been hugely impactful, contributing to improving the quality of our lives and its enjoyment,” Papazian wrote in an email to The Denver Post. “He never seemed to present himself as the ‘front person.’ Instead, he created countless opportunities for others to succeed and shine. But Frank was always there, strong, empathetic and behind the scenes. … His footsteps are too many to follow.
When he was inducted into the Denver & Colorado Tourism Hall of Fame in 2024, the organization summed up Day’s legacy by saying he “has been a pillar of the Colorado hospitality industry for over 50 years, while also enriching local communities through his work, culture, and philanthropy. … Frank’s lifetime role in Colorado tourism and hospitality can’t be overstated.”