Danny Griffith can still recall the smell of the corned beef and cabbage cooking in the kitchen.
Griffith, the owner of J.W. Snack’s, was in the middle of preparing his traditional St. Patrick’s Day meal, consisting of 75 pounds of corned beef and cabbage for the Irish holiday. A few hours later, Governor Jared Polis announced the closure of restaurants statewide to dine-in services, and shut down local gyms the same day.
“I thought, gee, I hope we’re only shut down for a week or so,” Griffith said in a March 15 interview in the midst of preparing another St. Patrick’s Day meal. “We had 75 pounds of corned beef cooking, and had just bought groceries. All I knew was I had just bought $5,000 worth of groceries and I was told by the governor to close. I was a little upset. We had absolutely no heads up, no warning. They weren’t courteous at all.”