A coffee company founded by a man who once served time at California's Vacaville State Penitentiary is planting its third Denver-area flag on East Colfax Avenue. Convict Coffee is planning a shop at 2260 E. Colfax Avenue, according to a city filing, joining its original Parker location and a second shop on Evans Avenue as the company expands its second-chance mission into one of Denver's most storied commercial corridors.
The Colfax filing was first reported by WhatNow, which noted the company has not announced an official opening date even though its website already lists the Colfax shop as coming soon. The new location will occupy a corner spot with a patio and indoor seating inside the historic Savageau Building, a space that previously housed Savageau Coffee & Ice Cream and, before that, Smith+Canon Ice Cream — a storefront lineage Hoodline first chronicled back in 2020. Per WhatNow, the Colfax shop will carry forward Convict Coffee's specialty-coffee, lively-atmosphere, community-focused approach, following the template set by the Evans Avenue location, which offers games, events, and a bar-like setting.
From Prison Cell to Corporate Suite
Convict Coffee was founded in April 2024 by Dan Klehm and his family after Klehm turned down a CEO position out of frustration with executive pay disparities, according to 9News. Klehm's own path ran through Vacaville State Penitentiary in his early 20s following arrests for grand theft auto, burglary, and weapon possession, before he rebuilt his career as executive vice president of Applebee's and later as COO and CEO at Illegal Pete's and Cheba Hut, per the same report. That arc — inmate to corporate executive to founder — underpins what WhatNow describes as a mission centered on giving people second chances.
The company backs that mission with a pay structure that breaks from standard corporate practice. No executive or manager can earn more than 10 times the pay of the lowest-paid employee, and entry-level baristas start around $20 an hour plus tips under a profit-sharing model, the Denver Gazette reported — well above the roughly $15 to $17 an hour average for Denver metro baristas in 2025, according to the same report.
Coffee Roasted Inside a Women's Prison
Convict Coffee's cold brew beans are processed through Redemption Roasters, an in-house roasting initiative operating inside the Denver Women's Correctional Facility on Havana Street. The program was launched in 2022 to teach incarcerated women marketable roasting skills and pay them standard wages before release, according to Colorado Correctional Industries. Proceeds from the company's baked goods and local fundraising events also support eight local sober living homes that provide transitional housing for formerly incarcerated people, the Denver Gazette's report notes, with stable housing widely considered a key factor in reducing relapse and reoffending immediately after release.
Inside its shops, Convict Coffee partners with the nonprofit Art for Redemption to display and sell artwork made by incarcerated individuals, adding what Shoutout Colorado describes as a distinct visual and storytelling layer to the customer experience. The company has also raised more than $150,000 toward recidivism-reduction efforts since launching in April 2024, per WhatNow, and broadly supports programs aimed at helping formerly incarcerated people avoid returning to prison as well as programs meant to keep young people out of trouble in the first place.
A Corridor in Transition
The Colfax expansion lands squarely in the middle of Denver and RTD's East Colfax Bus Rapid Transit project, a construction effort exceeding $197 million that is installing dedicated center-running bus lanes with completion slated through 2026. The city has rolled out grant programs and initiatives like We Back the Fax to help local storefronts weather the disruption, according to RTD-Denver. It's a corridor Hoodline has tracked closely before, including Lilac Coffee's downtown crossover from its Colfax roots earlier this year.
Klehm's long-term ambitions extend beyond opening more corporate-owned shops. He has said the company plans to offer low-cost franchise ownership opportunities specifically to rehabilitated former inmates, per 9News — a potential path around the capital and lending barriers that formerly incarcerated people often face when trying to start small businesses. The Colfax opening also arrives against a shifting legal backdrop in Colorado, where Senate Bill 24-030 updated the state's definition of recidivism in July 2024 to exclude technical probation and parole violations, focusing instead on new felony or misdemeanor convictions, according to the Denver Gazette.
Beyond the mission, the Colfax shop is expected to keep Convict Coffee's offbeat menu and heavy-metal-inflected atmosphere intact, pairing specialty coffee with dirty sodas, energy drinks, and gourmet grilled cheese sandwiches. No opening date has been set, but with three Denver-area locations now in the pipeline, the company appears to be betting that its second-chance model can scale well beyond its Parker origins.
