Delta Expansion 2026
Delta Expansion 2026
Real screenshots of what's actually live right now, not renders.
One campus, three ventures, seven days a week.
Mimi's at Roadhouse, the Vivere Colorado food trailer, and Vivere Catering — the strategy, the agreements that have to exist first, the website and menu-board builds, the launch plan, and an honest read on what is genuinely ready for September and what is not.
Status of this document — draft, and deliberately incomplete in one specific way. Every fact here was confirmed directly by Joe or verified against a cited source. No financial figure has been invented. Lease terms, rent, revenue share, commissary fees, menu pricing, and wage figures are marked Pending and stay that way until the real numbers arrive — the lease agreements are expected the week of August 17–23, 2026. Where the Feb 2026 Expansion & Partnership Overview still holds, it is cited. Where it has been overtaken by events, that is said plainly rather than quietly patched.
The plan, in one line. Three ventures on one campus at 215 Ute Street in Delta — the Delta Roadhouse — less than a mile from the original shop, all opening in early September 2026.
This is a tight, capital-light expansion built on assets that already exist: a two-year-old brand with a 4.9-star reputation, a trailer that is already owned outright, and a partner venue that supplies the building, the commissary, the smoker, and the courtyard. Nothing here requires buying real estate.
The strategic idea, stated plainly. The Delta Roadhouse is open Friday and Saturday only. Vivere's three ventures run Sunday through Thursday. That is not a scheduling accident — it is the whole plan. Vivere converts 215 Ute Street from a two-day music venue into a seven-day destination, and in doing so becomes the anchor on five days a week rather than a tenant living off someone else's foot traffic.
What that means for the agreement. Mimi's is not asking the Roadhouse for space. It is bringing five additional operating days, a reason for families to come midweek, a food program the venue doesn't have to staff, an in-house caterer for its event center, and a marketing engine. The arcade opens on days it currently doesn't. The agreement should reflect that exchange running in both directions.
The honest risks. Three of them are large enough to name in the summary:
What is genuinely ready. The trailer is owned. The menu is defined. The site model already exists and is proven — mimissweettreats.com is built, fast, and ours. The menu-board system is built and running. The social pipeline is built. The commissary, smoker, and courtyard are available. Vivere can start real work today on the websites, the brand, the boards, and the content, without waiting on a single answer.
This document is long on purpose — it is the foundation the whole build runs on, not a summary. These are the entry points.
The seven-day strategy, the site plan, and what Vivere brings to the table.
02Mimi's at Roadhouse, the trailer, catering — and the wholesale move.
03Five shared resources, one agreement, and the liquor question.
04Website storyboards, wireframes, menu boards, and brand.
05The checklist, week by week, with owners and hard gates.
06Every open question, grouped by who answers it.
Everything built, being built, and referenced — one click away. Bookmark this section.
The shared master plan. Updated as decisions land — the link never changes.
LiveMenu, standing schedule, and a working order-ahead system — live stock, pickup codes, concert-night set-break slots.
LiveFour service styles and a qualifying quote form that captures date, headcount, venue, power, and setting.
LiveLocation #1. The Roadhouse location becomes a section on this site.
LiveThe running digital board system. New units are added as board sets here.
PartnerThe venue. Tavern, arcade, event center, and the live-music calendar.
Digital set for the arcade counter; printed panels for the courtyard. See §16.
Orders are stored and return a pickup code, but nothing texts the trailer yet — needs credentials.
Trailer channels plus launch films and animated cards. See §18–19.
The trailer's name is a working name, not final. "Vivere Colorado" is not confirmed — the name will be finalized later and a new domain created for it. vivere-colorado.pages.dev is a preview URL, not a claimed domain. This matters because the Mimi's site's own footer already used "Vivere Colorado" as a web-credit brand pointing to a different, unrelated domain — our own research flagged that collision independently before it came up in conversation. That old reference has been removed from all 13 live Mimi's pages (now credits vivereweb.com) and deployed to staging. Until the trailer's real name is set, treat every "Vivere Colorado" in this report and on the preview site as a placeholder.
The actual form for the trailer. Download and start filling it in today.
The Vivere Catering packet. Needs the Roadhouse's commissary details.
This is the September 1 path. 14 days' notice — file by Tue Aug 18.
$66, same day, online. Gates the health application — do it first.
Form DR 0589. The multiple-events licence is free.
The dairy-plant determination, and the wholesale registration check.
The Delta Roadhouse opened in June 2026 as a combined music venue, restaurant, tavern, and arcade. It is open Friday and Saturday — the tavern page lists "Friday & Saturday 11:00 AM - 9:00 PM +" and the arcade 11:00 AM–7:00 PM, with press at opening noting plans to add Thursday nights.
Why this is the right shape. A music venue and a family ice cream shop want opposite customers at opposite hours — which is normally a problem, and here is the entire advantage. Neither cannibalizes the other. The Roadhouse gets midweek life it does not currently have and an arcade that opens five more days. Vivere gets a venue, a commissary, a smoker, a courtyard, and a liquor license it could not afford to build. The weakness is equally clear: on Vivere's five days there is no borrowed traffic. Every midweek customer has to be earned, and that is a marketing cost that belongs in the plan from day one — not a hope.
Unverified on this diagram: the courtyard's exact dimensions, utility hookups, and whether the commissary and smoker are accessible Sunday–Thursday when Roadhouse staff are not on site. All three are questions for TW and Miles, and all three are listed in §25.
This matters because it determines the terms. Read cold, this looks like a tenant asking for four favors — space, a kitchen, a courtyard, and a liquor license. Read correctly, it is a partnership where both sides bring assets. Vivere's side of the ledger:
| What Vivere brings | What it's worth to the Roadhouse |
|---|---|
| Five additional operating days | The venue currently earns on two days a week. Mimi's and the trailer give it a reason to be open seven, without the Roadhouse staffing or funding it. |
| The arcade opens midweek | A revenue stream that currently sits idle five days a week starts earning, because Mimi's presence justifies opening the building. |
| A food program they don't run | The trailer feeds the campus Sunday–Thursday. No kitchen labor, no menu development, no food cost on the Roadhouse's books. |
| An in-house caterer for the event center | Private-event bookings become easier to sell with catering attached. Vivere Catering can be the default vendor for their own event business. |
| An established brand with a two-year reputation | Mimi's brings 4.9-star recognition in Delta. The Roadhouse is two months old. Association runs in both directions and one side has the track record. |
| A marketing engine | Vivere builds and runs the websites, the content pipeline, the menu boards, and the social channels. Cross-promotion of Roadhouse events costs them nothing. |
What both sides are taking on. This arrangement ties two young businesses together tightly. The Roadhouse is lending its licensed premises, its kitchen, its smoker, and its liquor license — every one of which carries its own risk if something goes wrong on the other side of the campus. Vivere is committing its expansion, its production, and its second location to a single property. Both parties are exposed to each other's execution, which is the strongest possible argument for writing the terms down now, while everyone is enthusiastic, rather than after a problem forces the conversation. See §10.
Some analysis from earlier planning work is still sound and worth reusing rather than redoing. Some of it describes a different business than the one being built and must not be carried forward. This table is the dividing line.
| What | Status | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Trailer build & overhead economics | Carries over | $56K–$104.5K build (base $75K), ~$28K annual fixed overhead excluding COGS, COGS ~33% of revenue. Still the right frame — though the trailer is now owned, so build cost is largely sunk. |
| Colorado benchmarks & the plate model | Carries over, with a caveat | $20/plate and the 5% capture rule still apply to event days. They do not describe a trailer parked in a courtyard five days a week — that is a different revenue model and needs its own. |
| SWOT frame | Rebuilt in §24 | The structure is sound; every entry has been rewritten against the campus model. |
| Partnership & profit-sharing structures | Highly relevant | Six structures — revenue share, profit share, fixed fee, draws, equity, buyout — inform the partnership-structure options in §10. |
| Obstacles & single points of failure | Carries over | Still the right questions. The answers change — see §25. |
| All prior five-year projections | Retired — rebuild required | Every prior revenue model describes a different set of pillars than the one being built. No total, growth rate, or scenario from earlier planning survives. The model is rebuilt from Delta + Roadhouse + trailer + catering + wholesale, using real numbers from Naomi. |
| Delta "event room" revenue driver | Superseded | Private events now happen at the Roadhouse's event center. Wholesale and product-mix drivers survive and get stronger under the manufacturing move. |
The rebuilt financial model is not in this draft, and that is deliberate. Producing five-year projections right now would mean inventing a rent figure, a revenue share, a commissary fee, menu prices, and wage rates — five fabrications compounding into a number that looks authoritative and isn't. The lease terms arrive the week of August 17–23. The model gets built the week after that, from real inputs, and it will be a standalone section of this report. What §25 lists is exactly what it needs.
Inside the arcade building. Ice cream, expanded food, and 21+ treats — plus the new home of production and wholesale.
Food trailer, owned and in hand. Technique-forward smash burgers in the courtyard.
Event catering out of the Roadhouse commissary. The venue's own event center is customer #1.
How the three fit together. They are not three separate bets — they share a kitchen, a courtyard, a customer, and a calendar. The trailer draws families midweek; those families buy ice cream at Mimi's and tokens at the arcade. Mimi's production line supplies both locations and the wholesale accounts. The commissary that preps the trailer's fries also produces catering. One weakness of that design is worth naming early: shared resources mean shared failure. When the commissary is unavailable, the trailer, catering, and production all feel it at once. §23 covers the redundancy plan.
Location #2 sits inside the arcade building, taking over the snacks-and-ice-cream offering the arcade currently advertises. That detail matters more than it sounds: this is not a cold open into an empty room. The arcade already has customers, already tells parents to "grab a drink in the tavern, keep an eye on things" while kids play Skee-Ball and Donkey Kong, and already points them at ice cream. Mimi's is upgrading an existing offer to a known brand, for an audience that is already in the building.
The reciprocal commitment is the important part of the deal: the arcade opens because Mimi's opens. Five days a week that building currently sits dark now has a reason to be lit, and both businesses earn on days neither earns today.
| Category | Detail | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Ice cream & sweet treats | The established Mimi's menu and recipes, made in-house | Confirmed — carries over from 320 Main |
| Expanded food menu | Broader than the original location's offering | Menu TBD — needs Naomi |
| Liquor-based sweet treats | Boozy ice cream shakes and similar, under the Roadhouse's license | Structure unresolved — see §11 |
| Arcade concession | Replaces the arcade's existing snacks & ice cream | Confirmed |
| Production & wholesale | Manufacturing relocates here from 320 Main Street | Confirmed — see §9 |
The one that needs care: alcohol inside a family brand. Mimi's has spent two years building a 4.9-star reputation as a place parents take their kids. Location #2 serves alcohol, inside an arcade full of children, in a building attached to a tavern. That combination is workable — plenty of family venues serve alcohol — but it is not automatic, and it is not primarily a legal problem. It is a brand and operations problem: how the 21+ menu is named, where it is displayed, who is allowed to make it, how ID is checked at an ice cream counter, and what never appears in Mimi's marketing. §11 and §17 cover the structure. The decision to make early is whether the alcohol offering is a distinct sub-brand or simply a section of the Mimi's menu — that choice is hard to reverse once signage and boards are printed.
The trailer is owned and in hand, which removes the single longest lead time from the September 1 target. What remains is permits, a defined menu, and a place to plug in.
Its operating model is unusual and worth stating precisely, because it changes how the business should be marketed and how its website works: this is not a touring food truck. Five days a week it sits at a fixed, known address — 215 Ute Street — with constant hours. Two days a week it is free to travel for festivals, weddings, and catering. Most food-trailer marketing is built around answering "where are you today?" For Vivere Colorado, that question mostly has a standing answer, and the site should lead with the answer rather than a tracker. §15 covers what that means for the build.
The concept is a technique-forward smash burger trailer, not fair food. Every item on it is a deliberate choice that costs more effort than the easy version.
| Item | Build | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Smash burger | Brioche sesame-seed bun, caramelized onions. Single or double. | The volume item. Fast on a griddle, scales with the crowd. |
| Tallow fries | Triple-cook method, beef tallow. | The signature — and the biggest operational commitment on the menu. See below. |
| Roadhouse Smoke Burger | ½ lb smoked blend, smoked then seared. Triple-cook fries, garlic aioli, Pecorino Romano. | Limited to ~30/day. Smoked on the Roadhouse's smoker. |
| Gochujang Chicken Cashew Salad | — | The non-burger option. Different station, different prep. |
Two things about this menu need a decision before September 1.
Triple-cook fries are a multi-stage process, not a menu item. The method — blanch, chill and dry, fry low, chill again, fry hot to order — needs boiling capacity, refrigerated holding space for par-cooked product, and realistically two fry temperatures. That is prep hours and equipment before a single order is taken, and it is a food-safety process a health inspector will ask about. The good news is that the commissary exists and is the obvious place to do stages one through three. The question to settle is whether the trailer has the fryer capacity and cold-holding to finish them at service volume — the trailer's actual equipment list is the single most useful thing to send me next.
The Roadhouse Smoke Burger depends on someone else's equipment and someone else's brand. Using their smoker makes it a fifth shared resource alongside the space, commissary, courtyard, and liquor license — and it needs a cook-chill-reheat process with time and temperature records. Separately, the name puts the partner's brand on a Vivere product. Both belong in the written agreement, and the second one is the kind of thing that is easy to agree over a beer and awkward to unwind later.
The 30-a-day cap is an asset, not just a constraint. A limited daily item with a real reason for being limited is the most reliable scarcity mechanic in food service. It gives people a reason to come early, a reason to come back, and something specific to post about. Treat the count as a feature — put the remaining number on the board and on social each service day.
Built and live. vivere-colorado.pages.dev/catering — four defined service styles (trailer service, full service, drop-off, dessert bar) and a working quote form that captures date, headcount, venue, service style, power availability, and indoor/outdoor. Enquiries are validated, rate-limited, stored with a reference number, and kept 90 days. Prices are deliberately absent — the page quotes per event rather than publishing rates that don't exist yet.
Catering is the least visible of the three ventures and probably the highest-margin. It is produced out of the Roadhouse's commissary kitchen and sold into events — including, most obviously, the Roadhouse's own event center.
That adjacency is the whole advantage. Most caterers pitch venues from the outside and fight to get on a preferred-vendor list. Vivere Catering is already inside one, cooking in its kitchen. A venue that can quote catering alongside the room closes more bookings, which means the Roadhouse has a genuine reason to want this to work.
| Channel | What it is | Why it's winnable |
|---|---|---|
| Roadhouse event center | In-house catering for their private bookings | Physically inside the venue, using its kitchen. Lowest friction of any channel. |
| Weddings | Western Slope venues, full service or dessert-only | Mimi's brand recognition plus a dessert offer few caterers match. |
| Corporate & community | Meetings, graduations, reunions, brand activations | Weekday capacity that would otherwise sit idle. |
| Trailer-as-catering | The trailer parked at a private event Fri–Sat | Uses an asset already owned on the two days it is otherwise idle. |
The strategic question this raises — and it should be settled with TW and Miles rather than assumed — is whether Vivere Catering is complementary to the Roadhouse's event business (their in-house caterer, making their rooms easier to sell) or competitive with it (bidding against them for the same events). The complementary reading is better for everybody and is almost certainly the intent, but it is worth putting in writing which it is.
Production and wholesale manufacturing move from 320 Main Street to Mimi's at Roadhouse, specifically to expand wholesale capacity. This is the most structurally significant decision in the plan and the one getting the least attention, so it is worth being explicit about what it does.
Three things follow from it:
The sequencing risk, stated plainly. If production equipment leaves 320 Main Street before the Roadhouse facility is licensed and operational, both locations lose product at once — and so do wholesale accounts, the trailer, and catering. The move must be sequenced so the original location never goes dark: keep producing at 320 Main until the new facility is approved and proven, then cut over. This is an easy mistake to make under launch pressure and an expensive one to unwind. Detailed licensing findings and a recommended cutover sequence are in §12.
Why this is the strongest quiet idea in the plan. Retail revenue is capped by how many people walk through a door in a town of Delta's size. Wholesale is capped by production capacity and sales effort — both of which are things you control. It is the least weather-dependent, least labor-per-dollar line on the campus, and the Roadhouse itself is a natural first account. If the midweek destination strategy underperforms, wholesale is the leg that keeps carrying.
Vivere is asking the Roadhouse for five distinct rights. Each carries different risk and each is usually documented separately. They should be settled together, in one agreement, before money is spent.
| Resource | What must be settled |
|---|---|
| 1. The space inside the arcade building | Lease or licence to occupy · square footage and a drawn boundary · term and renewal · rent structure · utilities · who funds the buildout and who owns it at exit · signage rights · exclusivity (can a competing dessert or food vendor come on campus?) · what happens if the Roadhouse sells or closes · independent access and keys on days the venue is closed |
| 2. Commissary kitchen | Access hours including Sun–Thu when their staff are not on site · storage allocation · who holds the food-safety licence the production runs under · cleaning · fee · priority when both parties need it · notice to terminate · the county's commissary agreement form, signed (see §12) |
| 3. Courtyard | Trailer siting and footprint · utilities provided (power, potable water, greywater, trash) · whether the Roadhouse can displace the trailer for its own events · exclusivity against competing food vendors on Vivere's nights · who controls the space during Roadhouse events · permission to enclose, heat, or wind-block for winter, and who pays |
| 4. Smoker | Access and scheduling · who cleans and maintains · fuel cost · food-safety responsibility for cook-chill-reheat · what happens when it is down · written permission to use the name "Roadhouse" on a Vivere menu item |
| 5. Liquor licence | The hardest item — see §11. Licensee of record · who employs the pourer · who rings the sale · who carries liquor liability · indemnification both ways · training standards · what happens to Mimi's if their licence is suspended, and to them if Mimi's causes a violation |
Pending Lease terms and figures arrive the week of August 17–23, 2026. No rent, revenue share, or commissary fee appears anywhere in this document until they do. When they land, this section becomes the checklist they are measured against.
Start here — this may be much easier than it looks. Colorado's public licensee dataset shows Delta Roadhouse LLC holds Tavern licence No. 03-25524 for "209 & 215 Ute Street," issued June 12, 2026. That is a two-address licensed premises. If the arcade building is 209 Ute Street and already sits inside the approved premises diagram, most of the problem below disappears.
Action: obtain the approved premises diagram from the City of Delta Clerk, (970) 874-7566. Does it cover the arcade building? Does it cover the courtyard? This is the highest-value phone call in the project.
What does not work as described. CRS 44-3-301(3)(a)(I) makes it unlawful both to exercise privileges under another party's licence and for a licensee to allow it. The prohibition runs both ways, so proceeding informally exposes both Mimi's and Delta Roadhouse LLC. The exposure runs in both directions under the statute, so this is worth resolving together, early, rather than assuming informally.
Alcohol will not be legal by September 1. If a premises modification is required it runs on form DR 8442, local approval before state, against 30-day posting holds and two-to-three-month norms. Plan a dry soft open with liquor as phase 2. There is no bridge: special event permits are limited to nonprofit, charitable, religious, political, and government applicants and capped at 15 days a year; entertainment districts require 20,000 sq ft (HB26-1330, which would have reduced that to 5,000, failed 32–31 on April 2, 2026); resort-complex licensing fits the campus concept exactly but requires a hotel with at least 50 rooms. And a mobile trailer can never hold a Colorado retail liquor licence — CRS 44-3-901(6)(g) requires a permanent designated location.
| Issue | Why it matters | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| Your insurance almost certainly excludes this | Standard general liability policies contain a liquor liability exclusion. Umbrella policies frequently carry their own. Mimi's current policy likely covers nothing here. | Standalone liquor liability policy or ISO endorsement CG 24 08, before the first pour. |
| The under-21 staffing problem is structural | Reg. 47-913: under 18 may not serve alcohol at all; 18–20 only with a 21+ supervisor on the premises. A teenage ice cream counter and alcohol service at the same window are incompatible — and a 21+ supervisor during every alcohol hour is a permanent labour cost that appears in no margin model. | Decide the staffing model before the menu. It may be cheaper to confine alcohol to specific hours or a specific station. |
| Pour to order; never pre-batch | A measured made-to-order pour into a shake is a mixed drink. Pre-batching and freezing an alcoholic dessert risks unlicensed manufacturing plus federal TTB exposure — 27 CFR 17.133 permits alcohol in ice cream only where "only sufficient spirits are used for flavoring purposes," a test a product designed to deliver an effect fails by construction. | Build the menu around to-order pours only. No frozen alcoholic product held in a cabinet. |
Not legal advice. This is orientation for a conversation with a Colorado liquor attorney, and that conversation should happen before any spend. The research file 12-liquor-compliance.md contains 23 drafted questions to take into it.
The verdict: a fully licensed September 1 opening is not arithmetically possible. Colorado local public health agencies have 14 working days simply to respond to a plan review submission — and a response is not an approval. Submitting Monday, August 17 puts the response due Friday, September 4. If the commissary agreement travels with the lease (August 17–23), realistically September 11. Then corrections, fire inspection, pre-opening inspection, fee, and issuance. Realistic licensed opening: late September to mid-October.
But September 1 is still achievable — under a temporary event licence. $50, waived for existing licensees, requiring 14 days' notice. August 17 plus 14 days lands on August 31. The math closes. That is the honest path to a real September 1 soft open: a single permitted event, framed as a preview, while the full mobile licence proceeds behind it.
This is commonly underestimated. The trailer, the catering line, and Mimi's at Roadhouse are three licences, three plan reviews, three fees. Delta County — not CDPHE — is the licensing authority for all three.
| Licence | Plan review | Annual fee | Gated by |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mobile Unit (trailer) | $155 | $481 now $567 from Jan 1, 2027 (SB25-285 schedule) | Commissary agreement · sales tax licence · CFPM certificate · locked menu |
| Catering from a Commissary | $155 | Roadhouse commissary documents | |
| Brick & Mortar (Mimi's #2) | $155 | Building plans · buildout |
Zoning: cleared. Research flagged that City of Delta Title 17 contains no explicit mobile food vendor use category, which raised the possibility of a conditional use permit or a code amendment — a City Council cycle measured in months, and the only item on this project that could have produced a "no" rather than a "later." Confirmed resolved by Joe on 2026-08-14. With that closed, every remaining permit item is a scheduling problem, not an existence problem.
Do not build before approval. Beginning the arcade buildout before plan review approval is a statutory violation and can force tear-out at your cost. If any work is already underway, it should stop until the packet is submitted and the county has responded.
Today is Thursday, August 13. These offices are open today and tomorrow. Waiting until Monday costs two business days out of nineteen. And the temporary event licence must be filed by Tuesday, August 18 — 14 days' notice ahead of September 1 — or the September 1 soft open is gone regardless of everything else.
In this order. This is the single most actionable page in the report.
| # | Who | Number | Ask |
|---|---|---|---|
| ✔ | City of Delta — Community Development | (970) 874-7909 | DONE. Zoning for a semi-permanent mobile vendor at 215 Ute Street is cleared. No longer blocking. |
| 2 | Delta County Environmental Health | (970) 874-2165 | Confirm three packets, current fees, plan review turnaround, whether one commissary agreement covers both trailer and catering, restroom requirements for a fixed-site mobile, and whether the Smoke Burger needs a smoking variance. |
| 3 | City of Delta — Clerk | (970) 874-7566 | The approved licensed-premises diagram for liquor licence 03-25524. Does it cover the arcade building and the courtyard? Modification timeline and local fee. |
| 4 | Delta County Fire Protection District #1 | (970) 399-2955 | Trailer fire inspection requirements, LP-gas, Type I hood and UL-300 suppression verification, inspection lead time. |
| 5 | Delta County — pre-opening inspection | (970) 874-2168 | Schedule expectations once plan review clears. |
| 6 | CDPHE Milk Program | — | Does scratch-formulated wholesale ice cream production classify as a dairy plant? And: does Mimi's hold current wholesale registration for deliveries already made? See §9. |
The existing Mimi's codebase is not a starting point, it is most of the finished product. The audit found 22 public pages, a 95 KB design system with 639 design tokens, 26 Cloudflare Functions endpoints, and a staging-to-production deploy pipeline with a leak guard.
| Asset | What exists | Reuse |
|---|---|---|
| Site framework | Vivere Framework v2.0 · Poppins + Playfair + Pacifico · tokens #d41020 / #ffd700 · fluid type · 4px spacing engine | Direct. Both new sites inherit it. |
| Deploy pipeline | build-dist.ps1 → staging → review → prod, with a LEAK DETECTED guard | Direct for the Mimi's locations section. Clone the pattern for Vivere Colorado. |
| Owner-editable content | flavor-admin.html + Functions + KV — a working pattern for non-technical updates | This is the answer to the trailer's schedule page. Tyler updates hours from a phone; no dev involved. |
| Menu boards | 18 board HTML files, Screen A / Screen B player, 11-entry rotation, Cloudflare-hosted, USB fallback | New board set for the Roadhouse counter. See §16. |
| Content pipeline | 34 Python scripts — card generation, headless-Chrome rendering, animation, TikTok-safe formatting, print flyers, Blotato scheduling | New brand config per venture. Same machinery. |
| Photography | 26 unique gallery images + 89-file source library — all Mimi's, all Delta #1 | None for the trailer or the Roadhouse. This is the real asset gap. |
Built and in staging. master.mimis-sweet-treats.pages.dev/roadhouse — cloned from the live site's own component library (the today-strip pattern reused as a two-location comparison, the bento grid, stats band, and footer, all pulled from styles.css rather than rebuilt). Staging only — not on the production domain until reviewed.
Decision: a locations section on mimissweettreats.com. Two Delta ice cream shops on separate domains would compete against each other in local search and split the domain authority Mimi's has spent two years building. One site, a page per location, and a separate Google Business Profile for each address — that is what makes two locations additive rather than cannibalising in search results.
Motion budget: opacity and transform only, IntersectionObserver, all of it disabled under prefers-reduced-motion. Lighthouse 100 is the standard and animation is not allowed to cost it.
Built, live, and functional. vivere-colorado.pages.dev — the standing schedule, the menu, and a working end-to-end order-ahead system. An order placed on the site is validated, checked against live stock, written to storage, and returns a pickup code. Concert-mode is built and dormant: one line of config injects a show name and set-break pickup times into the slot picker.
Deliberately pay-at-pickup. No card data is collected anywhere, which keeps the site entirely out of PCI scope. Card payment via Clover is phase 2. The one genuine gap: placing an order does not yet notify anyone — it stores the order and returns a code, but texting the trailer needs an SMS provider and credentials that don't exist yet. Until then, orders must be read from storage.
A trailer site normally exists to answer "where are you today?" This one mostly doesn't need to — five days a week the answer is 215 Ute Street. So the site leads with a standing schedule and surfaces only the exceptions, and spends its real energy on the thing that carries the margin: Friday and Saturday bookings.
The one technical decision that matters. Whoever runs the trailer must be able to post "closed tonight, weather" from a phone, in thirty seconds, with no developer involved. That constraint should dominate every other consideration — and Mimi's already solved it. The flavor-admin.html + Functions + KV pattern in the existing codebase is exactly this: an owner-editable field that the public site reads. Reuse it rather than building a schedule system. An exceptions-first design also means the common case requires no updating at all, which is why it will still be accurate in March.
The zero-photo launch problem. On September 1 there may be no finished trailer, no wrap, and no food photography. The launch design must be genuinely good with zero real photos — that means typography, colour, and the menu itself carrying the page, with photo slots designed in from the start and swapped later. This is a real constraint and it is better to design for it than to discover it on August 30.
The board system already exists and runs — 18 board files, a Screen A / Screen B split with an 11-entry rotation, hosted on Cloudflare, with a USB fallback. Adding units is configuration, not a new build.
| Unit | Recommendation | Reasoning |
|---|---|---|
| Mimi's at Roadhouse | Digital boards — new board set on the existing system | Indoors, controlled light, mains power, and a menu that changes. Everything the current system is already good at. Boards should also carry Roadhouse event listings on Fri–Sat — that is free goodwill and useful to the customer. |
| Vivere Colorado trailer | Printed rigid panels — not a screen | Outdoors in Delta: 25.8 days a year over 90°F, direct sun, generator power, weather, and theft exposure. A TV is the wrong tool. Print the core menu; use a small chalk or magnetic strip for the daily Smoke Burger count and sold-out flags. |
The pricing rule, carried over and extended. The existing board project has a hard rule that prices are never invented and never estimated. It applies to every new unit: no price appears on any board, printed or digital, until Naomi has confirmed it in writing. A wrong price on a wall is a customer dispute every single day until someone notices.
The problem: "Vivere" now spans a web and marketing agency, a food trailer, and a catering company — while sitting on a campus next to two other brands. Someone searching "Vivere Colorado" wanting a website will find a burger trailer, and vice versa.
This collision was already live, not just theoretical. Research into the Mimi's codebase found the site's own footer already shipped "Custom website by Vivere Colorado", linking to a domain unrelated to both the agency's real site and the trailer. Confirmed 2026-08-13: the trailer's name is not final, and a new domain will be created for it once it is. Fixed 2026-08-14: the footer credit on all 13 live Mimi's pages was changed to vivereweb.com / "Vivere" and deployed to staging. Every "Vivere Colorado" elsewhere in this report and on the trailer's preview site is a placeholder until the real name is set — see the pending notice in §Links.
The recommendation: a house of brands, with Vivere-the-agency invisible to consumers. The trailer and Vivere Catering stand on their own to the public, under whatever name is finalized. The agency keeps its identity strictly B2B and does not compete for the same searches. Trademark classes differ — Class 42/35 for web and marketing versus Class 43 for restaurant and catering services — which makes coexistence workable, but it means separate filings and separate defence. That is an attorney conversation, not a design one.
Their verified palette is navy #183C6B, brass #B57E28, and bone #E5D6BD, set in Arvo slab serif. Mimi's runs red #d41020 and gold #ffd700.
The darks collide; the metallics bridge. Navy against Mimi's red is muddy and fights for attention. But Roadhouse brass and Mimi's gold are close cousins, and their bone reads as a natural shared ground. Recommendation: adjacency on a shared bone background, with each brand holding its own zone — and no fused lockup. A combined logo would weaken both. They are neighbours on a campus, not a merged entity, and the branding should say exactly that.
On the 21+ menu. Naomi has confirmed she is on board with alcohol. The brand recommendation stands regardless: give the 21+ items their own named section, their own visual treatment, and their own place on the board — never mixed into the family menu, and never in the hero of any Mimi's marketing. The goal is that a parent scanning the board for their kid never reads an alcohol item first. That costs nothing and protects a two-year-old 4.9-star reputation.
| Brand | Channels | Reasoning |
|---|---|---|
| Mimi's at Roadhouse | Existing Mimi's accounts — no new handles | A second location should never split an established audience. Location #2 is content for the Mimi's channels, not a competitor to them. It also inherits the followers on day one. |
| Vivere Colorado | Own accounts — IG + Facebook first, TikTok if capacity allows | Different brand, different product, different audience — event-goers, wedding planners, and burger people, not Delta ice cream regulars. Needs to build its own following. |
| Vivere Catering | No separate social. A page and an inquiry form | Catering sells through venues, referrals, and search — not a feed. A social account here would be an unpaid job with no return. |
Google Business Profile is the highest-return item and the easiest to get wrong. Mimi's at Roadhouse needs its own profile at the new address. Two profiles for one brand in one town will compete unless each is distinctly categorised and described. The trailer, sharing an address with the Roadhouse's own listing, hits a known duplicate-address problem — worth setting up deliberately rather than discovering later.
These are the shots that exist once and are gone forever if missed. Everything else can be re-shot on a slow Tuesday. This list is the reason to read this section before September, not after.
| Week | Gate | Actions |
|---|---|---|
| Thu 13 – Fri 14 right now | ✔ Zoning cleared | Zoning confirmed — no longer blocking · call Environmental Health, City Clerk, Fire · confirm CDPHE wholesale registration Naomi · sales tax licence filed ($66, same day) · site + brand builds shipping Joe · photograph the empty space before buildout Tyler |
| Mon 17 – Sun 23 the decisive week | Tue 18: hard deadline | TEMPORARY EVENT LICENCE FILED BY TUE AUG 18 — 14 days' notice, protects Sept 1 · lease + commissary docs arrive · CFPM certification booked · menu locked for plan review submission · liquor premises diagram obtained |
| Aug 24–31 | Submission | Three plan review packets submitted · trailer fire inspection scheduled · sites in staging for review · boards built · launch content scheduled |
| Sep 1 | Soft open | Trailer serves under temporary event licence · dry — no alcohol · sites live · first-service photography |
| Sep 2–15 | Response window | County responses received · corrections turned around fast · Mimi's buildout continues only if plan review permits · catering inquiries open for October+ |
| Sep 16–30 | Inspections | Pre-opening inspections · licences issued · Mimi's at Roadhouse opens · arcade extends to seven days |
| Oct 1–15 | Stabilise | Full licensed trailer operation · liquor modification progressing · winter courtyard plan decided and ordered · day-30 scorecard reviewed |
Blocked by no permit, no lease, and no third party. This is the answer to "when do we start" — the answer is now.
Every figure below carries a source and a vintage. Nothing here is estimated.
| Measure | Delta city | Delta County | What it means |
|---|---|---|---|
| Population | 9,421 | 31,598 | Small primary market. The campus must draw from Montrose to grow. |
| Median age | 40.3 | 48.1 | The county is old; the city is not. Your customers live in town. |
| Under 18 | 24.5% | 19.1% | Real child density in the city — the arcade + ice cream thesis is sound. |
| 65+ | 21.7% | 28.4% | A large daytime, midweek, early-evening audience nobody is targeting. |
| Median household income | $45,250 | $57,774 | The core constraint. See below. |
| Poverty · child poverty | 20.5% · 26.7% | 14.0% | A $20 plate is a genuine decision for much of the primary ring. |
ACS 2020–2024 5-year estimates. Delta County School District 50J first day of school 2026: August 17 (official district calendar).
The income gap is the single most important market fact in this report. Delta city's median household income is $45,250 — against Montrose at $70,386, Grand Junction at $70,080, and a Colorado median of $95,470. Delta is at 47% of the state median. A technique-forward burger with triple-cook tallow fries is a premium product in a market that mostly cannot buy premium every week. This is not fixed by marketing. It is fixed by having a genuine value tier on the menu — a single smash and fries at a price a Delta family does not have to think about — alongside the premium items that travel well to Montrose and Grand Junction.
| Ring | Drive time | Population | Use |
|---|---|---|---|
| Primary | 0–10 min | ~14,256 | The weeknight business. This is who actually shows up Sun–Thu. |
| Secondary | 10–30 min | ~17,117 | Montrose (32 min), Cedaredge (23), Olathe (23), Hotchkiss (29). Weekend and destination trips. |
| Tertiary | 30–60 min | ~203,146 | Do not model from this. 68% is Mesa County at 51 minutes with its own restaurant market. |
The site sits 280 feet from US 50 — but one block off it, with no drive-by storefront. CDOT 2024 counts the US 50 / SH 92 junction at 19,000 AADT. That traffic is an opportunity only with corridor signage; without it, the number is theoretical. Mimi's #1 is 0.69 miles away — closer than assumed.
| Period | Conditions | Courtyard verdict |
|---|---|---|
| May – Sep | Frost-free, long evenings. Jul avg high 93°F, 25.8 days over 90°F | Prime — needs shade and cooling, not heat |
| Oct, Apr | Shoulder. Median first fall freeze Oct 7, last spring freeze May 1 | Marginal — heaters and windbreak buy ~6 weeks on each end |
| Nov – Feb | Dec avg high 40.4°F / low 15.4°F · ~30 freezing nights per month · ~6 days that never thaw · sunset 4:54 pm on Dec 21 | Unrealistic outdoors. The entire Sun–Thu dinner window is after dark and below freezing |
NOAA/NCEI 1991–2020 Climate Normals, station DELTA 3E. Elevation at site 4,938 ft. Freeze-free season 159 days.
Three consequences that must shape the plan, not be discovered in November.
A flat twelve-month trailer pro-forma is wrong before it starts. Model four seasons.
Two findings that work in your favour. Competition is genuinely thin: Delta County has only 62 food-service establishments and 6 drinking places countywide (BLS QCEW 2025). And labour is more available here than statewide — Delta County unemployment ran 5.2% in June 2026 against Colorado's 4.0%, and sits above the state line every month. The staffing problem in §24 is real, but the local labour market is on your side.
| Strengths | Weaknesses |
|---|---|
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| Opportunities | Threats |
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| Blind spot | Why it matters | Do this | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cleared | Zoning has no explicit category for this | Delta Title 17 has no mobile food vendor use class, which could have forced a Council cycle. | Resolved 2026-08-14. No action needed. |
| Blocker | Wholesale may be non-compliant today | Two deliveries already shipped. The buyer takes the embargo — you lose accounts by costing them a citation. | CDPHE call before the next delivery. |
| High | The Roadhouse's kitchen may not be finished | Press at opening described temporary food-truck service and a kitchen under construction. "Commissary access" is unverified against physical reality — and two of three licences depend on it. | Site visit and photographs this week. |
| High | Thursday nights may already have been tried | Press said Thursdays would start in July. All 15 published events Aug 14–Oct 9 are Fri/Sat — zero Thursdays. Whether that was tried and failed or never attempted is the best available evidence for or against the entire Sun–Thu thesis. | Ask Stites and Van Hee directly. |
| High | The arcade closes at 7pm; shows run 8–11pm | Mimi's would sit inside a building that closes before the headliner — forfeiting exactly the late-evening, adult, boozy-shake trade the liquor plan is built on. | Set Mimi's operating hours independently of arcade hours. |
| High | Everything is on one property | There is no geographic diversification across the three new ventures — all three depend on one property and one relationship continuing. | Term, exit, and assignment clauses. Keep 320 Main independently viable. |
| High | Never surrender 320 Main's production licence | Re-establishing a surrendered licence means a fresh plan review. Keeping capability there is cheap insurance and the fallback if the Roadhouse relationship ends. | Retain production capability at 320 Main permanently. |
| Medium | Two locations, one town — measure the effect | The two Mimi's sit 0.69 miles apart. Whether location #2 grows the total or redistributes it is an empirical question, and the answer only exists if the baseline is captured first. | Baseline 320 Main's weekly revenue and transaction count now, before location #2 opens. |
| Medium | Three checkouts, one customer | A family buying a burger, a shake, and a beer pays three separate businesses. That is friction on every visit. | Leave separate at launch; revisit a campus loyalty or shared-tab layer in phase 2. |
None of this can be measured retroactively. The instrumentation has to exist before opening or the day-30 review is guesswork.
| Signal | Why | Set up before opening |
|---|---|---|
| 320 Main weekly revenue & transactions | The baseline for measuring location #2's true net contribution. Worthless if captured after. | This week |
| Trailer covers by weekday | Tests the Sun–Thu thesis directly. Which nights actually work? | POS reporting configured |
| Arcade admissions on Vivere days | Shows, in numbers, the midweek value Vivere brings to the campus — useful to both sides | Ask Stites and Van Hee to share it |
| Catering inquiries & close rate | The margin line. Where do leads come from? | Form attribution |
| Wholesale tubs/week vs the 25–35 ceiling | Tells you when capacity, not demand, becomes the constraint | Simple weekly log |
| GBP views & direction requests, both locations | Confirms each location is being found for its own trade area | Both profiles live |
| Smoke Burger sell-out time | A daily read on demand and a free scarcity signal | Note it every service |
Treat this as an expansion announcement from an already-trusted local shop, not a new-brand launch — tease "scoop #2 is coming," support (don't claim) the trailer's Sept 1 preview, hold a countdown with no fixed date until Naomi locks one in, then open dry and family-first, with zero alcohol/21+ content anywhere before or during opening week since liquor service is unconfirmed.
Break the news that Mimi's is opening a second location inside the Roadhouse arcade this October, framed entirely as 'your favorite ice cream shop is expanding.' Mimi's is NOT part of the Sept 1 preview event (that's the trailer's dry, one-day permit) — any mention of it must read as a supportive neighbor shoutout, never as if Mimi's has a presence there. No alcohol or 21+ references anywhere.
Reveal the new 'Mimi's at Roadhouse' location lockup as expansion news, anchored in two years of trust at 320 Main.
Supportive, arms-length shoutout to the trailer's Sept 1 preview day — good-neighbor cross-promotion, explicitly not claiming Mimi's involvement.
Behind-the-scenes 'we've been keeping a secret' reveal filmed at the existing 320 Main shop, ending on the new location lockup.
Keep momentum through the gap after the Sept 1 preview by showing the physical space coming together and reinforcing 'same team, same recipes' trust — without stating a firm date until Naomi confirms one. Still fully dry/family messaging, no alcohol references.
First real look inside the build-out, pairing ice cream with the arcade setting as a family-fun combo.
Nostalgia-driven trust post: two years at 320 Main leading into the second location, still no fixed date.
Drive foot traffic to the new location's first week. Strictly dry and family-oriented: daytime energy, arcade + ice cream pairing, zero alcohol/21+ language or imagery since the opening is confirmed dry and liquor service is not confirmed to happen at all.
The actual 'we're open' announcement with address, keeping it dry and family-framed.
POV opening-week visit — walking in past the arcade, getting a cone, daytime family energy.
Normalize two-location life and cross-pollinate traffic between 320 Main and the Roadhouse counter as part of everyday Mimi's content — no liquor/21+ messaging unless and until Naomi separately confirms that service and a real campaign is built for it.
Light poll-style prompt treating both locations as equally established, driving comments and repeat visits.
What must be true before any of this ships:
Build real anticipation for a not-yet-named trailer by leading every post with craft and honesty — the smash technique, the two-stage tallow fry — instead of a brand reveal, carrying that same unhurried confidence through a one-day preview and into standing Sunday–Thursday service.
Build a first audience from zero by showing process and craft, not brand identity — and be upfront that the name is still open, since nothing here can lean on a locked name or printed asset.
"The Smash" — close-up of the patty going down on the flat-top, the caramelized onion folded in, the brioche bun toasting. Craft first, no brand talk.
"The Tallow Fry" — the real two-stage method (first pass low and slow, second pass hot and fast) explained plainly, correcting nothing publicly but simply never claiming more than two stages.
First real introduction to the trailer itself — dusk exterior shot, honest note on the working name, save-the-date for Sept 1. Sets tone and identity without overclaiming.
Drive attendance to the single permitted preview day while setting expectations exactly right: one day, dry, reduced menu, courtyard only — a first taste, explicitly not a grand opening.
Save-the-date that states the real constraints plainly instead of hyping them away.
On-the-ground documentation of the actual preview — real reactions, no scripted urgency — closing with an honest note that standing service is still ahead.
Use the licensing gap between the preview and standing Sun–Thu service as content, not silence — recap the preview honestly and keep showing craft so the account doesn't go quiet for weeks.
Thank-you for the preview turnout paired with a plain, non-overpromising update on timing — no specific date invented, just the truth that licensing is in progress.
Ingredient-choice story — why tallow, why brioche, why caramelized onion folded into the smash — using "to live Colorado" as a spoken tone anchor, never as literal Italian or wine-country imagery.
Announce the actual 'we're open' moment — regular Sunday–Thursday courtyard hours — and convert the audience built since August into routine visits.
The real launch post. States the standing schedule plainly, ties back to the same technique content the audience has already seen, keeps the tone as unhurried as everything before it.
What must be true before any of this ships:
Build quiet, honest awareness for Vivere Catering as the natural next step from the Roadhouse's event center and the trailer/Mimi's growing local presence — starting an interest list well before there's anything to book, then converting to real (but still price-free) capability language once the commissary license actually lands.
Let the local audience know full-service catering is coming to the Roadhouse campus, without claiming it exists yet. No pricing, no 'book now' — just an honest heads-up and a low-commitment way to raise a hand ('tell us about your event') so there's a warm list of real leads ready the moment the license lands.
First public mention that catering is coming to the Roadhouse campus this fall. Frames it as an addition to what's already happening at 215 Ute Street, not a launch.
Humanizing sneak peek of the commissary kitchen being readied — reinforces that this is real and in progress, not vaporware, while still being upfront that it isn't open yet.
Introduce Vivere Catering as genuinely operating — a licensed commissary kitchen serving the Roadhouse's own event center plus outside bookings — using real capability language for the first time. Still no prices, still no 'book now.' The CTA stays soft ('tell us about your event' / 'let's talk') because there is no lead-notification system yet to catch and respond to inquiries.
The 'we're actually up and running' post — anchors on the licensed commissary and the two real service lines (Roadhouse event center + outside bookings), explicitly withholds pricing.
Shows range — event center weddings, private parties, outside/off-site bookings — closing on a plain-language interest slide rather than a hard CTA.
Cross-promotional close-out post that ties catering to the local audience who already knows Mimi's and the trailer, borrowing real (not invented) local presence to build trust without hard-selling.
What must be true before any of this ships:
Grouped by who answers. Ranked by how much they block.
Every factual claim in this report traces to one of these. Where a claim could not be verified it is marked UNVERIFIED or UNKNOWN in the text rather than sourced to something weaker. Full research files — 26 documents, roughly 1.5 MB, with 478 unique citations — sit alongside this report in _research/.
What is deliberately not in this document. Rent, revenue share, commissary fees, menu prices, wage rates, staffing counts, and rebuilt five-year projections. Every one of them requires a real input that does not exist yet. Producing them now would mean stacking five assumptions into a number that looks authoritative and isn't — which is exactly how earlier projections stopped being useful. The lease terms arrive the week of August 17–23; the financial model gets built the week after, from real inputs, and becomes its own section here.
