Anthony Lygizos wrote his first business plan in 2013 with a few things in mind: he wanted to work daytime hours; offer a starting rate of $20 per hour to his employees; and be a part of the solution when it came to low pay for restaurant industry workers.
During his years in the hospitality industry, including a four-year stint at Aspen’s Little Nell hotel, Lygizos had seen many servers, kitchen employees and managers leave for lack of pay.
“Even up until 2015, the average wage for back-of-the-house employees was $12.50 in Denver,” Lygizos said. “So, when recreational marijuana was legalized here, there was “this disruption within the service industry workforce” because the cannabis industry was paying $13.25 an hour.”
“That is such a gunshot that 75 cents is enough to cause a ripple,” he added. “My friends and contemporaries couldn’t even live in the city they worked in or afford to start a family.”
In 2018, Lygizos opened Leven Deli Co., at 123 W. 12th Ave. in Denver’s Golden Triangle neighborhood. Now, six years and 56 employees later, he’s expanding the business with the goal of helping his staff, many of whom have been with him for years, climb the company ladder.
Known for its pastrami sandwiches, house-baked bread and pastries, and weekend lines that snake out the door, Leven is moving its bread production and catering business into a 12,000-square-foot facility in the Elyria-Swansea neighborhood this month. Lygizos is also opening Leven Supply, a retail, wine, pizza and sandwich shop, in Washington Park this summer, as well as a 500-seat restaurant a block away from the Colorado Convention Center next winter.
“If we really want to take this business the distance, we need to figure out a way to ramp up the yield and the amount of output that that team is able to produce with the same workforce without just telling them to work faster and harder,” Lygizos said. “I’ve basically just been stockpiling every penny because we really do want to provide these great careers for our entire team.”
Being a part of the change
Lygizos, a 38-year-old Chicago native, graduated from the University of Denver in 2008. His hospitality degree led him to Aspen, where he worked at The Little Nell luxury hotel, helped open the now-closed bb’s Kitchen, and was a part of the Paradise Bakery, an Aspen institution.
Instead of letting the hospitality industry burn him out, Lygizos said he decided to be a part of the change he wished to see. So he moved to Denver, which he felt was an easier market to break into than Aspen, in 2013 to open his own restaurant. With his half-Jewish and half-Greek background, Lygizos considers himself a sort of sandwich connoisseur and landed on a deli as the vehicle for his dream business model. He got more serious about his plan a few years later and searched for real estate while studying for his Sommelier certification.
He was also assistant manager/wine buyer for Potager in Capitol Hill. “I would get up every morning at 4 a.m. and work on Leven until noon, and then work at Potager until 10 p.m.,” he said.
When Lygizos opened Leven Deli Co. in 2018, it was just him and executive chef Luke Hendricks, who he brought along with him from Potager. At the time, he felt like the concept of the deli was “dying across America,” Lygizos said. “These very iconic institutional delis that are in New York, like The Stage Deli and Carnegie Deli were all closing, everything except for Katz’s.
“Luke, you know, was a little bit like, ‘What are we doing here?’” But Lygizos said the risk has paid off, and he wants to see the reward trickle down to his employees.
Leven serves 1,200 people on any given day, and the most popular menu item is the beloved Reuben ($20) with pastrami that is cured in-house for 12 days (they prepare hundreds of pounds each week, Lygizos said). “It’s about 10 percent of our business,” he said.
The deli began by making its own sauces, curing its own pickles and smoking its own fish, but in 2019, Lygizos hired former Hi*Rise bakery owner Doug Anderson to make the deli’s focaccia, sourdough, rye, flatbread, baguette and gluten-free bread. To keep up with lunch service, the team has to deliver bread three times a day from their current 2,000-square-foot, off-site bakery.
The gluten-free bread is what initially attracted customer Kari Niedrich, who discovered Leven a few months ago and now visits sometimes twice a week for the pesto, mozzarella and prosciutto sandwich on a toasted, gluten-free baguette ($18.50). A coworker, who usually packs a PB&J for lunch, was shocked to find that Niedrich “frequented a place with a $20 sandwich,” she said. “But I’ll pay the premium for some good gluten-free bread.”
Niedrich, a New Jersey native who moved here a couple of years ago, has only been celiac for the last two years. “I frequented a deli in Hoboken for fresh mozzarella and prosciutto, and Leven’s fresh mozzarella is what caught my eye as much as the gluten-free bread,” Niedrich said.
“Leven holds a candle to the East Coast delis all day long, but with a Denver warm and feel, which is partly why I’m staying here.”
More of a mentor than a boss
The word “leaven,” the inspiration for the deli’s name, means to rise or transform something for the better. And it’s part of Lygizos’ goal for his employees, who start at $22 per hour and can make as much as $37. But it’s not just the pay that makes employees happy. Lygizos also maintains close relationships with the staff.
Celestina Salazar, who started working as a bartender in 2018 and is now the company’s director of operations, said Lygizos shows his support to employees around the clock.
“When one of our employees broke his foot, Anthony was constantly checking in on him, dropping off food, doing his laundry and helping him get groceries,” Salazar said.
Salazar, a 32-year-old Denver native, was a public school reading interventionist, but started working in the restaurant industry to supplement her income, joining Leven in 2018.
At the time, she didn’t know much about the ins and outs of the business. Leven cross-trains its employees in all departments when they’re first hired, however, so they can easily move into other jobs or up the ladder. Salazar’s rise went from bartender to bar manager to kitchen manager and eventually general manager before she took on her current role.
“When you’re in the school system, it’s harder to move up, and it isn’t always just based on your work ethic,” she said. But at Leven, “my hard work and effort was being seen and heard, not taken advantage of. Anthony has made sure I’m growing as fast as Leven is growing.”
Over that time, Lygizos taught her key aspects of the restaurant’s finances, ordering process, accounts and payables, scheduling, etc.
“I see him more as a mentor than a boss,” Salazar said.
New Italian restaurant
Salazar is still learning the details of her new role, but she eventually wants to start a family and could see herself in a CEO or partner role down the road.
This is exactly what’s pushing Lygizos to juggle three expansion opportunities at once. “We want restaurant employees to buy that dream house and see longevity in this career,” he said.
The new, 12,000-square-foot production facility was born out of necessity, since the deli had outgrown its existing commissary space. The larger location, at 4190 Garfield St., will house Leven’s growing catering service (about 25% of the company’s business, Lygizos said), in-house bread program and retail production, including pickles, sauces and other products that will be featured in the upcoming Leven Supply shop. That shop, at 300 E. Alameda Ave., will also sell packed pastrami, plus to-go sandwiches and pizza.
Like Leven Supply, Lygizos’ third concept, simply called Leven, was born out of an offer from a landlord proposition. Patrinely Group, the Houston-based developer behind the 30-story Block 162 office tower at 675 15th St., recruited Leven, which will open a 500-seat restaurant serving deli sandwiches, sourdough pizzas and pasta next year.
“We have to leverage our effort on the dough production, especially with this new facility, in order to pay our people more,” Lygizos said. “So pizza makes sense. Pasta makes sense.”
Leven, which he hopes to open in the winter of 2025, will be a full-service restaurant with live trees planted throughout, a sprawling bread wall for photo ops, and greenhouse lighting.
The reason for its large size — there will also be a 100-person cocktail bar — is because “it’s downtown in a sort of food desert, and it’s a block away from the convention center, which sees on average 17,000 people a night,” Lygizos said.
Eventually, Lgyizos would like to grow Leven nationally, following this same business model of a production facility, retail shop and larger restaurant. Looking back on his original business plan in 2013, Lygizos gets choked up thinking about the employees he’s seen come into their own along the way, and the gratitude he’s received for his contributions.
“If we want to keep hitting these goals for our employees, we have to keep expanding,” he said. “Don’t get me wrong, we’re writing some checks that feel very scary to us right now, but you can’t grow without taking some risks.”
