Shooters Grill, a restaurant owned by Rep. Lauren Bobert of Colorado, where waitresses with handguns holstered on their hips served Shotgun burritos, Locked N’ Loaded Nachos, Swiss & Wesson burgers and Rifle Toast, closed in the Sunday after the building’s landlord decided not to renew the lease.
Ms. Boebert confirmed the closing in a statement posted on Twitter Thursday afternoon after being contacted by The New York Times, and said the landlord, Milken Enterprises, had “no political motivation.”
Benjamin Stout, Ms. Boebert’s communications director, told The Denver Post in June that the lease on the congressman’s campaign office, which is next door to Shooters, also would not be renewed by Milken Enterprises. Ms. Boebert’s statement Thursday did not refer to her campaign office, and Mr. Stout did not respond to an email about it.
Phone and text messages sent to Daniel Meskin, principal owner of Milken Enterprises, were not immediately returned Thursday.
Ms. Bobert was elected to Congress in 2020, unseating a five-term incumbent by running far to his right. She embraced the spectacle, shouting at President Biden during his State of the Union address and pushing for the installation of metal detectors outside the auditorium with her vows to carry a gun on the floor of the auditorium. Last month, she won the GOP primary.
Ms. Boebert told The Post Independent, which previously reported the closing on Wednesday, that she was notified in June that the restaurant’s lease would not be renewed. According to the outlet, Ms. Boebert said there was “not a lot of wiggle room or any compromise unless we bought the building ourselves.”
Ms. Boebert floated the idea of opening such an establishment at some point: “It could look like a Shooters cafe with pastries and some easy breakfast sandwiches and merchandise,” she said, as quoted in The Post Independent.
In her statement on Thursday, she added that “the Shooters brand is not going away. Exciting things are in the works.”
Efforts to reach the restaurant in Rifle, Colo., just over an hour’s drive from Aspen, were unsuccessful. Local officials reported seeing items packed inside the restaurant and taken out earlier this week.
Susan S. Beachy contributed research.
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