A national wine-focused restaurant chain with more than 75 locations across the country is finally making its way to Colorado, and Centennial will be the first stop. Cooper's Hawk Winery & Restaurant is set to debut at 9511 E County Line Road, bringing a combined restaurant, bar, tasting room, and wine retail concept to the Denver metro for the first time.
According to WhatNow, construction at the future site is already well underway, per a local realtor's social media post, though the company has not announced an opening date. The chain has, however, started posting job listings for the Centennial location, an early sign that the build-out is progressing toward completion.
Those listings include openings for a kitchen manager, restaurant manager, assistant executive kitchen manager, and restaurant office administrator, the report notes. Job postings reviewed on Indeed in August 2026 show the assistant executive kitchen manager role paying between $70,000 and $83,000 per year with 10% bonus potential, while restaurant manager and kitchen manager positions range from $55,000 to $65,000. The restaurant office administrator role is listed between $44,000 and $54,000, giving a snapshot of the local wages tied to the new location as hiring ramps up.
What Diners Can Expect Inside
Cooper's Hawk prepares its food in a scratch kitchen, and the Centennial location will feature a 110-item American-fusion menu, according to the same report. The restaurant combines dining with a tasting room and retail wine shop, sourcing grapes from Washington, California, France, and Chile for its private-label bottles.
The company's official location page states that the Centennial restaurant and tasting room will operate Monday through Thursday from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m., Friday from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m., Saturday from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m., and Sunday from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m., according to Cooper's Hawk Winery & Restaurants. Those hours reflect the company's standard formula of pairing full lunch and dinner service with weekend tasting room access.
The Wine Club Behind the Business Model
Central to Cooper's Hawk's appeal is its wine club, which offers members a curated wine each month, dining rewards and discounts, and access to exclusive events and experiences. The club has grown into what The Adventurist Magazine describes as the largest of its kind in the country, reaching more than 600,000 members nationwide as of 2025, according to The Adventurist Magazine. Members pay monthly fees to pick up exclusive bottles in person, a model that drives recurring foot traffic to each location.
That multi-revenue approach- restaurant, tasting room, retail, and subscription club under one roof- has translated into unusually strong sales. Nation's Restaurant News reported in June 2023 that Cooper's Hawk generated an estimated $10.3 million in average unit sales per restaurant in 2022, placing it just behind top-tier chains like The Cheesecake Factory and Ocean Prime in the upscale-casual segment, per Nation's Restaurant News.
From Orland Park Startup to National Expansion
Cooper's Hawk traces its roots to 2005, when founder Tim McEnery opened the first combined winery-restaurant in Orland Park, Illinois, after a formative trip to Napa Valley. McEnery, who started his career as a dishwasher, still serves as chief executive, according to the company's entry on Wikipedia. The chain's wines are processed at a 125,000-square-foot central winemaking facility in Woodridge, Illinois, which opened in 2018 with an initial production capacity of roughly 685,000 cases a year.
The company's growth has been fueled by outside investment. Los Angeles-based private equity firm Ares Management acquired a majority stake in Cooper's Hawk in July 2019 in a deal that valued the chain at more than $700 million, with McEnery retaining a significant equity stake, per the Los Angeles Business Journal. More recently, financial tracking service ListingTrack reported in July 2025 that the company was seeking up to $400 million in private credit to refinance debt and fund expansion ahead of a potential initial public offering.
Cooper's Hawk's wines have earned hundreds of national and international awards, and the brand also serves as the official wine sponsor of the Screen Actors Guild Awards, according to BOSS Magazine. The Centennial project fits into a broader wave of new sites the chain has announced this year, including planned locations in Dunwoody, Georgia, the Minneapolis-St. Paul metro, South Riding, Virginia, South Charlotte, and Pleasant Prairie, Wisconsin, part of what Hoodline has tracked expanding nationwide. For now, Centennial's opening date remains unannounced, but the job postings and active construction suggest Colorado's first taste of Cooper's Hawk is getting closer.
