Laura Hamrick has 15 breakfast burritos in her freezer.
These aren't the "burritos" from your grocer's freezer. These are hecho-en-Denver burritos from Milagro Burritos Inc. The ones in Hamrick's icebox represent just 2 percent of the bulk order recently made by her company, Xactly Corporation, after employees realized the COVID-19 pandemic would deny them their daily dose of chorizo, green chile, eggs and cheese.
See, Jesus Velazquez used to show up at the downtown Denver office tower at 1125 17th St. every morning to sling breakfast burritos to Xactly, a sales software company, and other businesses housed in the building. He'd been serving that building for almost 10 years. Not anymore. The city and state's stay at home orders canceled that morning tradition along with a lot of Velazquez's business.
"For me, I work for the owner and get a percentage (of the sales)," Velazquez said. "At this time I don't really have anything to do. I pick up a few little orders, no more than 50, just twice a week."
Xactly's office manager came up with the idea for employees to chip in and buy burritos in bulk to tide them -- and Velazquez -- over, said Hamrick.
"We got the email and basically our office manager said he's basically out of work right now since all of his typical delivery businesses are closed," Hamrick said. "She told him that Xactly loves him and wants to support him."
Company employees ordered nearly 700 burritos (679 to be exact). That's an estimated 340 pounds of burritos! Employees picked them up downtown last week, standing six feet apart from one another. At $3.50 apiece, Velazquez saw a windfall of almost $2,400 (before tip, Hamrick pointed out).
The gesture equated to over one week's work for Velazquez, indicating how ugly the COVID-19 crisis has been for local businesses. Pre-pandemic, he typically sold about 100 breakfast burritos a day, Monday through Friday, he said.
"I contact some people by email or by phone and some people responded to me like, you know, at this time I don't need to place an order with you," Velazquez said.
You don't have to suffer from breakfast burrito withdrawal. You, too, can have a stable of locally made breakfast burritos in your freezer. Milagro and Velazquez are open for business.
