Meet Desiree Keen of Rivers and Roads Coffee in The Clayton Neighborhood

Today we’d like to introduce you to Desiree Keen.

Desiree, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
How Rivers and Roads Coffee came to be is nothing short of a miracle. I still find myself looking around in awe and amazement, wondering when I’m going to wake up from this dream. I think most of those feelings came from the vast comparison to a few short years ago when our lives were snatched out from under us by illness and the accompanying heartaches and trials.

For the sake of time, I’ll try to make this extremely long story short (or shorter, at least). About 4 ½ years ago, I was diagnosed with Late Stage Lyme Disease. Prior to that, I had spent years watching as my marathon-running, cross-fitting, life-loving – self, began to slip away. By the time of my diagnosis (my correct diagnosis I should say, as I was misdiagnosed a half dozen times before this), my body and mind were a mere shell of who I once was. Unfortunately, that was only the beginning. Once I started treatment, the last small parts of my familiar self were snatched away. I spent the next 2+ years watching life pass me by from the prison of my own body. I became mostly wheelchair/bed-bound or occasionally leaving the house with a cane. That time in my life can only be described as pure hell.

Sadly, this was also the year after my husband/business partner, Michael and I got married. Talk about an opportunity for growth! It is, however, what I credit for our ability to work together as partners in our business today.

So how did we get to where we are now? It all boils down to our “Why.” There is so much I could say about this subject, but really, our entire business is based on one small idea. Love. Our decision-making and our complete business model centers around this one thing. In fact, our mission and motto is, “Love above all else.” While we are very very human and often fall short of this goal, it is our purpose, our passion, and our reason for being. This “why” was born from the darkest days of my illness. My husband and I had an epiphany of sorts. We realized that we had been living in a place of fear. More than that, we were making all of our decisions from that same place…understandably so, but detrimental none the less. While we had no idea what the future would hold or if there would even be a future, we did know is that we had to make a change. It left us begging the questions, “How do we break free from this fear cycle?” and “What is the opposite of fear?” The answer, of course, became clear. Love.

Love was the answer. It was our path forward. It was our future.

People ask us all the time why we decided to open a coffee shop. Truthfully, I can’t remember the details beyond the fact that Michael owned a coffee shop previously and we both missed it. What I do vividly remember though, is that before we ever knew that it would be a coffee shop, we had decided to open a place of community and a place to further spread our new-found mission of love. In that sense, we jokingly say that this coffee shop chose us. It’s funny, this is true for almost every detail of our shop. We don’t remember choosing the details, but once they came into existence, it’s as if we always knew they were meant to be. This is true for even the very location we exist in. When we first saw the space, we both intuitively knew that it would be our shop – despite the fact that there were 3 or 4 way more qualified applicants ahead of us, despite the fact that we were hours away from signing another lease somewhere else (somewhere nice but that never felt right), despite the fact that we had been told the space wasn’t ours and that they had chosen someone else. Yeah, despite all of that, we ended up in the space that was right, the space that felt like home even from the first time we saw it with dirt floors and mounds of trash.

From there, things started to unfold in undeniably serendipitous ways. When we first decided that we would create this community space, and when we finally knew that it would be a coffee shop, we still had no idea how we were going to pay for all of this. We tried to get loans, and despite good personal credit and collateral (our home), we kept getting denied. I see now that this was a blessing in disguise. Having a huge loan on top of our first-year opening costs would have been impossible. What we finally decided, and again, I’m not even sure how was to sell our house.

It was one of most terrifying things we had ever done (one that I wouldn’t recommend). For my personal belief in love, this was the biggest leap of faith I had ever made. We put our money where our mouths were (and where our hearts were), and dove head-first into the unknown. After basically spending our life savings on illness, our home was the last thing we had to our names. Letting go of that security was an act of indescribable belief in something greater than ourselves. What’s crazy though, was that we had immense peace during all of this life-altering change. We weren’t going to let fear stop us …no matter what it took. To this day, it was one of the most terrifying acts of love I have ever taken. It was also the one that paid off the most.

When we were in our darkest hours, we never could have imagined the beauty of our lives now (despite the fact that life sometimes still feels impossibly hard and exhausting). We have had people who we look up to, the people who helped form our aspirations and dreams, become regulars at our shop. We have seen the walls of fear broken down and the gaps of differences closed within our space. We have celebrated with people on the best days of their lives …and we have mourned with them on their worst. We have seen babies come into the world and families joined together. We have shared a donation-based monthly meal with hundreds of our neighbors who now feel more like family. We have seen people light up with inspiration …and people break down under the weight of this world. We have made friendships that we once wouldn’t have believed possible.

We have been fortunate enough to have seen the power of community – the likes of which rarely exists in these days of separation and fear.

Love. Always. Wins.

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?
We continue to see all of the opposition that we’ve had to face as a sign that we’re doing something right. We’re huge believers that life is happing FOR us and not to us. In any case, here’s a small sample of the challenges we’ve overcome so far. When we signed our lease for the coffee shop, the one that came in hours before signing on another space, we had expected to open a couple of months later. Due to some exceptional, unforeseen circumstances, we ended up opening almost a year later. A year! We planned for contingencies, but we never could have guessed that we would need another year of runway. Not many people know this but if we had waited one more week, we wouldn’t have been able to open (at least not without compromising our mission and taking on investors). Literally, one week!

And then there were more unknowns…

Within our first week of opening, it was clear that our business plan was obsolete. When we opened our door, we were nowhere close to ready for the number of people who would walk through it! We figured we’d scrape by the first few months and that eventually, people would learn that we were there, but what happened instead was also nothing short of a miracle. A line had formed before we even opened. It would suffice to say that our first day open was a disaster. We were completely unprepared and a total train-wreck!

…But our community, the one we felt destined to be a part of, came back anyway. They flooded our space with love and support – the likes of which neither of us had ever seen in our lives before.

To make up for our unpreparedness, we basically worked around the clock.

Once we’re open, and once we knew our original business plan was basically garbage, we felt surrounded with more unknowns than ever before. I’d like to say we pulled ourselves up, made a new plan, and executed it perfectly …but honestly, that wasn’t the case. We were overextended, exhausted, afraid (yes, fear still tried to creep in despite us filling our lives and minds with love), and holding on for dear life. We decided to take it day by day. Then, after a while, we took it week by week, and then month by month. Eventually, we stopped reacting to our situations and started planning for what we wanted in our future and for the future of our business. During all of that relearning, we faced more setbacks (some financial, some emotional, and some physical/health) than what seemed fair…

Within our first month of being open, we had our windows broken out twice, with damage done to the building during a third act of vandalism. Our sandwich case, the backbone of our lunch menu, completely broke down during our opening week. Our pastry display case in the front of our shop has broken so many times now that I have lost count – taking with it hundreds of dollars in inventory. Our fridge has defrosted …four times… costing us thousands in inventory. Our old oven only worked when we channeled our inner Fonzie. We replaced so many parts on it that it should have worked like new. Alas, we were finally able to replace it just a few months ago. We’ve needed to add more shelves, and tables, and fridges and freezers …not to mention more cups and plates and silverware. We’ve now redone our dishwashing system and are in the process of updating the rest of the kitchen. We’ve (Michael) fixed countless broken pipes, weird sounds, and malfunctioning equipment. The power has gone out more times this last year than I can recall happening in my entire life. We’ve had gas leaks and dealt with spilt water into electrical sockets. We’ve also replaced our original espresso machine for one that could keep up with our much busier than expected shop (no complaints here – that is a good problem to have, but another one of the scariest purchases we’ve made in our lives).

This list just begins to scratch the surface as it is what I can remember off the top of my head. Even writing this out though, helps me to remember all of the small miracles and loads of hard work that have gone into our business. Truly, life is happening for us …and I really couldn’t be more grateful!

Please tell us about Rivers and Roads Coffee.
Today, our business is a full-fledged coffee shop/roastery, bakery, and café. At Rivers and Roads, we make just about everything in house, from our baked-goods to our bread to our coffee syrups. We’re known for our light-roasted, sustainable, micro-lots of roasted beans – with rotating offerings every few weeks. We’re also known for our specialty baked-goods and our scratch-made full lunch and breakfast menu. Lastly, we’re widely known for our large selection of gluten-free and celiac-friendly (w/ some vegan and paleo) offerings. To say that we are committed to the details would be an understatement!

Currently, we are in the process of expanding our bakery to include the ability to fulfill wedding cake, birthday cake, and other special orders… as well as take-home baking mixes. In the hopefully not-so-distant future, we also plan to expand the roasting side of our business, offering a monthly subscription coffee service. Stay tuned…

Do you look back particularly fondly on any memories from childhood?
My favorite childhood memory is baking with my mom around the holidays – especially gingerbread houses. I think it stands out because my mom always jokes that she has no idea where I got my baking skills from. She hated baking but did it for us to make the holidays special. Unbeknownst to me at the time, a seed was planted for my love of baking and what was to be my future career. I suppose I could reason that Rivers and Roads wouldn’t be what it is today without those memories. Thanks, mom!

Contact Info:

• Address: 2539 E Bruce Randolph Avenue, Denver, CO 80205
• Website: http://riversandroadscoffee.com/
• Phone: 303-321-3052
• Email: http://riversandroadscoffee.com/
• Instagram: instagram.com/riversandroadscoffee
• Facebook: facebook.com/RiversandRoadsCoffee

Image Credit:
Jackie Zoeller of Denver Headshot Co

Getting in touch: VoyageDenver is built on recommendations from the community; it’s how we uncover hidden gems, so if you know someone who deserves recognition please let us know here.