Leveling Up the Experience

The changing of the seasons has brought some new changes to Lola's Place as it heads into its third winter, operating under the Ensign family. Serving as both a pseudo lobby for the Leland House, as well as a community gathering place, the new adjustments are meant to continue Lola's legacy serving the community. You're watching "The Local News Network," brought to you by Serious Texas Bar-B-Q and Kroegers Ace Hardware. I'm Gillian Arnwine.

We really wanted to uplevel our winter experience. We felt like we had built a pretty strong summer experience at the space and we were always, you know, as an entrepreneur and a business professor, I'm always asking myself like, what problem am I trying to solve for our customers? And the immediate problem at hand was, how can we give our customers a better winter experience?

After operating throughout the summer with several food trucks and a coffee shop, a few changes and shifts with the operating trucks left an opportunity for Lola's Place to provide a different range of services. One of the original trucks from the first summer, Cuevas Tacos and the sister business, Rokko Izakaya, owned by Oscar and Claudia Cuevas decided to stay on at Lola's Place and with some renovations, the food truck experience in winter remains.

So part of our upleveling the winter experience was to allow our customers to order inside and also pick up their to-go orders inside. So we now have a window inside the dining room where customers can come right in the front door, come into the dining room, order Cuevas or Rokko. The menus are there. They can pick up their to-go order. They'll get a number just like before and sit at the table and their food will be brought out to them.

With Taste Coffee moving to focus on its new location on North Main Avenue, Lola's was able to expand the bar area and develop a space to expand its offerings to include coffees, teas, and other non-alcoholic beverages. With the additions, Lola's Place is now also open for private parties and events four days a week and extended hours to include breakfast courtesy of Cuevas Tacos and Rokko Izakaya.

So our winter hours are, we'll be open every day of the week at 7:00 a.m. for our coffee drinkers and our breakfast goers. Breakfast will start at eight and on Sunday through Wednesday, we'll be closing at three. Thursday, Friday, Saturday, we'll stay open through dinner until 7:00 p.m. So on those days that we close at three, we have space in the facility for private rentals. So whether that's an artist in town who would like to offer a wreath making workshop, or a business that would like to have a meeting or an employee holiday party, or a family that would like to have a birthday party or a private holiday celebration.

Lola's Place has been partnering with multiple businesses and organizations since it opened in 2021, including businesses like Ska Brewing and Guild House Games. and multiple organizations.

We're also very passionate about inclusivity in the property. We have that as one of our core values. So we also partner with the Four Corners Alliance for Diversity and the Women's Resource Center and other organizations that promote diversity in Durango, the young professionals of Durango. We just really want to make it a safe space and inclusive space.

From December 8th through 11th, come celebrate the renovations with a free cup of drip coffee from Desert Sun Roasters while supplies last and sample some of the new menu offerings from Cuevas Tacos and Rokko Izakaya. December 15th is the grand reopening with the official launch of the new menus, drink specials, and more. Follow Lola's Place on social media to keep up with new programs and events. Find more information about this and other stories at durangolocal.news. Thank you for watching this edition of "The Local News Network." I'm Gillian Arnwine.