Meet Trailblazer Kim Schwan and Sara Cross

Today we’d like to introduce you to Kim Schwan and Sara Cross.

Kim and Sara, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
Sara and I absolutely love Colorado.  We have grown up visiting Colorado every year and finally made the move permanently ten years ago to small-town Buena Vista.  We left our corporate 9-5 careers in Arizona and somehow ended up working for a local restaurant/brewery.  It was a great experience since we both love working with people and appreciate good food.  After nearly ten years of working there, we decided it was time to venture out an open our own restaurant.  We were fortunate enough to purchase an extremely old building – late 1880’s – completely renovate it ourselves along with our family and friends (took almost a year!) and open Sorelle Delicatessen.  Since we are sisters, we decided Sorelle, which means “sisters” in Italian, would be a perfect name for our Italian inspired deli.  Many of our recipes are inspired by our family.

Family and the outdoors are super important to us.  Kim along with her husband and two young girls are always spending time outside – fishing, hiking, snowboarding, rafting, hunting and traveling around Colorado looking for their next adventure.  Sara and her husband are expecting their first child in May and can’t wait to share their love for the outdoors with their baby girl.

Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
It was definitely not a smooth road to get where we are today – I feel like it never is when opening a restaurant or any business!  Opening a restaurant is not easy and we decided to throw in a building renovation which was a headache in itself.  We had many obstacles and often questioned why we were doing this, but we stuck it out.  It was nice to have each other in this endeavor along the way. We encouraged each other to just keep pressing on.

Luckily we had a ton of help from our family and friends too!  We spent many nights burning the midnight oil  developing our business plan.  We wanted to make sure we were bringing something to our town the community wanted or needed.  It was important to us to really submerge ourselves into the community and listen to other locals while we were developing our concept. We wanted to compliment the community. Here we are following our dream of providing fresh, quality food to our town.

Alright – so let’s talk business. Tell us about Sorelle Delicatessen – what should we know?
We pride ourselves on serving only all natural meats and cheeses in our restaurant as well as a wide variety of homemade items.  From our desserts, lasagna and pasta salads, everything is made from scratch!  Quality and consistency is of utmost importance to us!   We also want to make sure everyone feels comfortable in our restaurant – like they are coming into our home.  Not many people know that catering is something that we specialize in – no matter if its a small or large event/gathering.  Within our first year of opening we won numerous “Best of BV” awards including; Best Employer, Best Lunch, Best Dessert and Best New Business.” In addition, we offer daily specials and punch cards for our locals.  We appreciate their support!

Do you feel like there was something about the experiences you had growing up that played an outsized role in setting you up for success later in life?
Growing up, all of the matriarchs in our families were always preparing fantastic meals. Family functions were centered around the kitchen! No matter what, we were always sitting around laughing eating wonderful food. We have great memories in the kitchen with them. Whether is was our Nana making her famous lasagna for Christmas, our Great Grandmother Dixie frying up some okra in the summer for bbq’s or our mom making delicious meals every night, we were always wanting to be involved in what was going on in the kitchen.

Contact Info:

• Address: Sorelle Delicatessen
  303 Highway 24 North
  Buena Vista, CO 8211
• Website: sorelledelicatessen.com
• Phone: 719-395-847
• Email: kim@sorelledelicatessen.com
• Instagram: @sorelledelicatessen
• Facebook: Sorelle Delicatessen

Image Credit:
Sorelle

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