A café and cocktail bar in RiNo has had its last call.
Queens Eleven, opened by local developer and restaurateur Fiona Arnold, closed at the end of service Sunday.
“We’ve appreciated our staff and managers and customers. We really enjoyed it and are sorry that we’re in a position that we have to shut,” said Andy Schlauch, the CEO of the restaurant’s parent company, Mainspring.
The dual concept opened in December 2019 at 3603 Walnut St. at the base of The Hub office building. Schlauch said the group negotiated a lease termination for the space, so it won’t have to continue paying rent.
“It’s just pure economics,” he said of the decision. “We opened three months before COVID, and we’ve tried pretty much everything we can think of to make it work.”
Those changes included altering the menu, tipping structures and staffing, Schlauch added. But the pandemic threw a wrinkle into the plans for the spot, which was named after elevenses, the overseas practice of having a midmorning snack, like tea and biscuits, at 11 a.m.
Arnold, the president and founder of Mainspring, is Australian — another country that participates in the ritual.
“A lot is driven by the fact that Denver’s office market has not rebounded since COVID,” Schlauch added. “From a gross revenue perspective, those three months before the pandemic were among our best. We haven’t been able to recover.”