Casa Bonita begins hiring hundreds of employees before grand opening in May
On Tuesday, Casa Bonita hosted its first hiring fair since the restaurant closed in 2020.
In January, the restaurant said it needs to hire more than 550 people before reopening in May. They expected to hire about 150 kitchen team members, 140 servers, 40 bartenders, 40 cashiers, 30 entertainers (including cliff divers!), and many others. Currently, there are nine different job positions posted on the Casa Bonita website.
"Sopapillas, and cliff divers and terrible food," lifelong Coloradan Joshua Garcia knows Casa Bonita and its reputation. He applied for a custodial position, hoping to be a part of Casa Bonita 2.0.
"I've been unemployed for about a month and I got the call last night so I was like super excited about this," said Garcia.
Tuesday, he joined countless other prospective employees in line outside 2500 Larimer Street in Denver, where the Lakewood restaurant held a job fair from noon to 4 p.m.
Some people used the fair to pitch other ideas.
"We sell hospitality robots that can like take people to tables, or food to tables, or help bus tables, things like that," said Caleb Keys with Pringle Robotics. He says the company's robots are already serving people at some casinos, but they hope to bring them to restaurants like Casa Bonita.
"There's like customizable mp3 options so with the South Park guys on board, I feel like they could do some really cool fun voice command stuff like that too," said Keys.
Others at the fair pitched themselves for positions that aren't posted on the website. Caricature artist Roby MacDougall planned to showcase his talents in hopes that Casa Bonita would consider hiring a caricature artist like they've had in the past.
"My wife grew up here and all of her siblings and friends have all had caricatures there over the last 30 years," said MacDougall as he sketched a portrait of Keys, "I saw that they're not advertising it, but I think they need one, so here I am."
Everyone in line is hoping their services will shape the new customer experience when the Colorado staple reopens.
"Hopefully we get some robots in as well as people," said Keys, "and a caricature artist!"
It looks like the cliff divers may have already been hired. There are no open cliff diver postings on the website, but there is a "dry dancer" posting. Interested candidates for other positions are encouraged to submit their applications at casabonitajobs.com.
