For most food manufacturers, it makes more financial sense to bake, brew, cook or create their product somewhere where the square footage is a little less expensive, like a business park, and to sell it where the rent – and the foot traffic – is higher.

Kent Beidel, who owns a string of mountain-town ice cream parlors called Sundae, did the opposite when he opened his newest and, by far, his biggest location in downtown Denver.

“We wanted to be right in front of people and hear them say, ‘Oh my god, they make the ice cream right here,’” he explained. “It’s backward … it’s hard. But it’s unique, and it’s really cool.”

Sundae opened in early June in a 5,100-square-foot space that includes a retail shop, a waffle cone-making “theater” where people can watch the staff turn out fresh cones, a pint-mixing classroom and a commercial kitchen – visible to customers on three sides through glass windows – that could one day supply multiple stores around Denver.

Beidel is betting those attributes will help the business stand apart from the competition in Denver, where there are already several big names making and selling scoops in multiple locations.

But that’s not the only gamble he took. Sundae is located on Sixteenth Street, the 44-year-old pedestrian mall that has become both a symbol of the city’s urban decay since the pandemic and a beacon of hope for its future after a $175 million renovation.

“Sixteenth Street is interesting,” said Beidel, who has watched it change over the past year since he first signed his lease at 1600 Glenarm Place. “It’s coming back. It still has a way to go, but we are seeing momentum start to build. Even in the last month, the foot traffic and the feeling downtown has perked up. … We are getting great feedback.”

To help, the Denver Downtown Development Authority — as part of a much larger business incentive plan — loaned Sundae $750,000. “It’s a loan,” he said. “We have to pay it back. … But we couldn’t have done this location without that support.”

Beidel has been in the food business for 22 years. Before ice cream, he was the founder of Loaded Joe’s, a restaurant and coffee shop staple in Vail. But in 2016, he sold Loaded Joe’s and took over two former Marble Slab Creamery locations in Vail and Edwards, rebranding them as Sundae. In 2020, he opened a third shop in Glenwood Springs.

“That was our first chance to build from scratch and decide what it should look like,” he explained, adding that Glenwood, which includes a kitchen, eventually began making ice cream for Sundae’s next two locations in Basalt and Snowmass.