When Eliot Vancil is on the road, there are a few things he’s looking for at his hotel.
He wants a place where he can wrap his hands around a cup of coffee in the morning, spread out a bit, maybe work on his laptop.
And when he returns in the evening, he’s angling for a bar where he can grab a drink and decompress.
Those things didn’t exist when Vancil and his wife, Tara, purchased the Beaumont Hotel in Ouray last July. But they do now, with last month’s opening of 1886 Coffee and this weekend’s grand opening of the Roosevelt Tavern.
“The main thing that drives all of our decisions is serving our hotel population,” Eliot Vancil said in a phone interview. “There was not a lot of space, not a lot of areas for people to do what I do in a hotel. The hotel was lacking an area for our guests to be able to enjoy the hotel.”
The establishment 1886 Coffee — a nod to the year the Beaumont opened — features an assortment of comfortable chairs and long, elevated tables with barstyle seating. The menu offers a variety of coffee drinks and pastries, quiche, sandwiches and other items, all made in-house.
Customers spend time on their laptops inside 1886 Coffee earlier this week. The coffee shop opened inside the Beaumont Hotel, 505 Main St., in Ouray earlier this month. Roosevelt’s Tavern, meanwhile, will have a grand opening this weekend at the hotel. Mike Wiggins — Ouray County Plaindealer
The coffee shop, located in the northern-most space of the hotel building at 505 Main St., is open daily from 7 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Starting this weekend, customers will be able to venture through the coffee shop into Roosevelt’s Tavern, a space longtime Ouray residents will recognize as the former Bulow’s Restaurant, which has been remodeled.
The tavern, named after President Theodore Roosevelt, one of the Beaumont’s famous guests, will offer craft cocktails and a “higher-end menu” of food, Vancil said. The space is also adorned with political art created by William (Bubba) Flint, an editorial cartoonist who has drawn for 30 years for organizations including the Dallas Morning News and the Dallas Cowboys’ team magazine, a nod to the hotel owners’ Texan roots.
A grand opening for Roosevelt’s Tavern is scheduled for Saturday featuring food, drinks and live music.
