RiNo Restaurant Incubator Graduates Into New Whole Foods

On the heels of its first birthday, RiNo’s Comal heritage food incubator is the latest to announce an expansion into the new Union Station Whole Foods Market.

Comal will join Birdcall, Füdmill, and Tel Aviv Street Food inside Denver’s first downtown Whole Foods Market, which opens Nov. 15. The “heritage food” stand will serve Mexican lunch plates and Syrian dinner dishes seven days a week.

Comal’s new Whole Foods outpost will act as a permanent popup, according to Slavica Park, director of workforce and economic development at Focus Points, Comal’s parent nonprofit.

“What an opportunity,” says Park, “more than anything to give (participants) another chance to apply what they’ve learned here.”

Based in the Taxi complex, Comal offers low-income women from the Globeville, Elyria and Swansea neighborhoods the chance to practice cooking for and running a restaurant.

Twenty-six women and one man have gone through the program in its first year operating. Four participants have gone on to secure their own catering or food truck business licenses.

The original Comal will continue to operate inside Taxi, where a recently installed garden will grow ingredients for lunches served weekdays 11 a.m. to 2 p.m.

Josie Sexton

• Comal Adds Friday Lunch Service, Enrolls Class of Syrian Refugees [EDEN]
• Birdcall, Tel Aviv Street Food Ready To Debut at the Union Station Whole Foods Market [EDEN]
• Comal, a Restaurant With an Uplifting Mission, Opens in RiNo [EDEN]