Last week, Otis’s BBQ owner Stephen Eshelman announced on social media that Sept. 10 would be his last day in Manitou Springs. Eshelman’s restaurant started as a food truck on the El Colorado Lodge grounds, but moved to its current location in the summer of 2024.
“The issues that I have here is that there’s no parking, so a lot of my customers that have been with me since the beginning can’t get down here,” said Eshelman. “I don’t have a kitchen, so I’m unable to produce food as I need to. The place that I’m at now [952 Manitou Ave] is wired for a rock shop, and it’s not a restaurant, so when I go to toast a bun or something, sometimes the power will go out three times when I’m trying to set up an order. So I kind of just have to move on to a place where I feel like I can expand more and do more, have a parking lot, and just have the ability to make the food that I want to make.”
Eshelman says he plans on finding a new location that is more conducive to his business “I’m gonna be able to do what I want to do,” he said. “I haven’t been able to do that. I can’t have my smoker in Manitou. I can’t have my smoker with me and that’s just been a real problem for me because it’s like I have to drive everywhere. Go get the wood, go get the propane, go get to meat, go to the smoker. It’s just a lot of running around that I’m not gonna have to do with a more centralized location. I’ll be able to have my smoker outside. I’ll be able to have everything delivered. It’s just in Manitou, I wasn’t able to do that, and that really kinda held me back a bit.”…