Chris Teregis was a regular at Spice Trade Brewery & Kitchen before he ever worked there. He’d come in with friends and family, drawn to the Greenwood Village brewpub’s singular pitch: globally rotating menus paired with culinary-driven beer, brewed on-site. When Teregis signed on as general manager in 2022, the place already meant something to him. By January 2025, it was gone.
Not the building. Not the beer. But the concept. Owner Dol Bhattarai, who co-founded Spice Trade with brewmaster Jeff Tyler and runs the Yak & Yeti chain of Indian and Nepalese restaurants across the metro area, took full control after Tyler’s departure and converted the kitchen to serve the same menu as his Yak & Yeti locations. He replaced the entire staff. Bhattarai told Westword at the time that the Spice Trade menu had become unsustainable, citing mounting losses, inconsistent hours and kitchen complexity.
Teregis opened up about the change himself on Reddit’s r/denverfood. He was heartbroken, he wrote at the time, but measured. He doesn’t fault Bhattarai for making that tough call. “He understands how to run a Yak & Yeti,” Teregis says now. “He understands how to make that product work. It made sense to him at the time.”…