Café Momentum, a nonprofit restaurant founded in Dallas to hire youth who have gone through the justice system, is coming to Denver.

The restaurant announced Monday it will begin construction early next year at the historic Curtis Park fire station on 3201 Curtis St. The nonprofit tapped Mike Waid, a former Parker mayor with experience operating businesses and nonprofits, to serve as the Denver location’s executive director.

Café Momentum’s mission is to hire courts-involved youth for 12-month paid internships where they’ll learn culinary skills, managing finances, how to gain future employment and provide them with mental health support.

It requires interns to be enrolled in high school or working toward a GED.

In an interview with The Denver Gazette, Waid explained the program is set up to give the teenagers leadership skills to succeed after going through the justice system and ensure they don’t go back after making a mistake when they’re young.

“It’s a program that’s really unique in its capacity of not only bringing these youth in, post-release from detention, but training them in front of house and back of house in an upbeat, fun, hip restaurant environment,” Waid said.

The restaurant will partner with regional youth detention services, such as Gilliam Youth Services Center and Marvin W. Foote Youth Services Center, to expose the internship program to incarcerated youth who may want to participate, he said. The program is voluntary, Waid said, not court-ordered.

Café Momentum is slated to open in late 2025 or early 2026, the restaurant said in a release, and plans to hire approximately 30 to 40 teens through the internship program.

The concept was founded in 2015 and expanded to Pittsburgh. In addition to Denver, it has plans to open in Atlanta, Houston and Baltimore.

Café Momentum looks at regions with higher youth incarceration rates and a vibrant dining scene and philanthropic communities for its expansions, Waid said, and Denver fit the bill.

In Colorado, Black youth are 7.3x more likely to be incarcerated than white youth, according to data from justice-advocacy group No Kids in Prison. The data from the group also found it costs $132,000 in taxpayer money to hold a child in a detention center for a year compared to $10,000 a year spent for public education.

“By having this program and helping these youth not go back into the system,” Waid said citing the data, “we are helping ease that financial burden on all of the taxpayers and our Denver government.”

More than a restaurant internship

The restaurant itself will feature a rotating menu developed by a hired chef with input from the interns.

The menu will highlight “Denver, Colorado food” with 50% of ingredients sourced locally, Waid said.

Denver’s Café Momentum restaurant will be located inside the historic Curtis Park fire station built in 1928, an 11,000-square-foot building. The first floor will make up the restaurant and the top floor will house a community service center for the interns to have a place to hang out, meet with therapists or their caseworkers and take financial literacy or leadership workshops.

“This is a purpose-built building created 96 years ago to save lives and now we’re going to be there changing lives for the future,” Waid said.

Waid said their team plans to convert a 3,000-square-foot annex on the former firehouse into an indoor vegetable garden to teach teens about sowing seeds, growing produce and including them in the restaurant’s dishes.

“It’s not just a restaurant,” Waid said. “The restaurant portion is just one of the tools that we use to help our youth become leaders.”

For Waid, who took the opportunity to lead the restaurant after working as executive director for the Douglas County Community Foundation, the most impactful part about the restaurant isn’t only about the interns who will go through the program.

It’s also about the interns’ social circles, through leading by example.

“The exciting part to me is the eight-to-12 peers that each of these youth have in their social network who’s going to see their success and how their efforts have turned their lives around and be inspired to do the same thing,” Waid said.

“That’s where the real systemic change comes from.”