Inside Bread & Butter Neighborhood Market — where 150+ small Colorado businesses share shelf space, and the owners know every regular by name.

Where the owners know your name.

She greets customers by name, one by one, as they walk in.

At the checkout, a neighbor is stocking up on provisions. Stacy gives them a nod and a friendly hello as she’s walking me through her store. Another needs assistance with beverages. Stacy drops everything and tends to each customer with unhurried, tender care.

No urgency. No transaction energy. Just… this is what we do here.

“Ah, and that one works at the museum nearby,” she tells me. I was filming with co-owner Stacy Poore at Bread & Butter Neighborhood Market in downtown Colorado Springs when I watched all of this happen in real time…

When’s the last time you walked into a store and someone already knew your name? Not because they scanned your loyalty card. Because they remembered. That’s Bread & Butter.

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Closer to Home

I often open interviews with a simple icebreaker: What does healthy mean to you? I never tire of learning the detailed nuances of each person’s interpretation of “healthy”. Many focus on balance, or a sense of well-being and vitality. Stacy’s answer was something else.

"Sometimes healthy just means closer to home."

-- Stacy Poore, Co-owner, Bread & Butter Neighborhood Market

She’s right. And it’s more radical than it sounds. Hydroponically grown local lettuces arrive at peak nutrient density — not days past harvest after a cross-country truck ride. Beef from Calicrate Ranch means you know the operation and the philosophy behind it. From local farms and artists to ranchers, bakers, and cheese makers… Bread & Butter Neighborhood market provides a truly unique curated selection of local goods… And to top it off, they make their own in-house prepared foods, made fresh daily.

Proximity isn’t just a feel-good value. It’s a nutrition strategy. Stacy just said it better than any wellness article I’ve read.

The Origin — and the Timing

Stacy and co-owner Aubrey Day met through a mutual friend around 2017. They didn’t know each other — but they’d both been independently dreaming about the same thing: a real neighborhood market for downtown Colorado Springs. They teamed up, spent nearly three years planning, and signed their lease in mid-March 2020.

Days before, everything shut down. They opened anyway.

“We didn’t really know what was coming,” Stacy said. “But it was time.”

On September 4th, 2020, the doors opened. A downtown neighborhood that had been driving miles for groceries finally had somewhere to walk.

And as Stacy put it, with characteristic understatement: they’re still standing.

What's on Those Shelves

The depth here is genuinely remarkable for the size of the space. Colorado-grown produce, local dairy and cheeses, local eggs, and grass-fed grain-finished beef from Calicrate Ranch. Fresh sourdough from Sourdough Boulangerie — one of a few Colorado Springs artisans making real bread. Local heritage grains from Pueblo.

Locally-roasted beans from Hold Fast Coffee and Loyal Coffee. Local honey, ancient grains, artisan chocolates, and handmade cards by local artists.

Moon Pepper’s pickles are a beloved local family-owned business. And then there’s Gangliano’s — an Italian market and deli that’s been a Colorado institution since 1921, and on the shelf at a five-year-old neighborhood market. That’s the kind of curation that takes real attention.

Altogether, Bread & Butter carries an estimated 150 to 200 individual small Colorado businesses on its shelves. Every jar of honey, every loaf of bread, every package of sausage is funding a Colorado farm, a Colorado baker, a Colorado rancher, a Colorado maker. That’s not incidental to the model — it IS the model.

"It's Hard to Be Small"

I asked about the biggest challenge. Stacy didn’t hesitate: the razor-thin margins, which become only more acute when running a business on principles and insisting on high-quality products from local artisans. There are no fancy vacations – let alone time off – or big personal purchases. But the means are both the end and the reward at once. This is the math she and Aubrey chose to live with.

“It’s hard to be small,” Stacy told me. And yet Bread & Butter does everything it can to make sure the small ones — the family ranchers, the artisan bakers, the salsa makers, the Italian deli institutions — can stay alive and keep going. The payment isn’t a big salary. It’s the connection. Knowing you’re helping the little guys (and gals!) fight the good fight.

Not surprisingly, the neighbors voted them a Nextdoor Neighborhood Favorite in both 2023 and 2024.

The Moment I Got Chills

Near the end of our conversation, Stacy mentioned (almost offhandedly) that in 2026, they’re getting closer and closer to paying off their investors and owning the store outright.

I genuinely got chills.

Because that’s what five years of razor-thin margins and showing up every day and knowing every name looks like when it starts to pay off. Not a Series A. Not an acquisition. Just: “We did it. And it’s ours.”

Worth the Visit

Bread & Butter Neighborhood Market is at 602 S Nevada Ave in downtown Colorado Springs, open daily 7 am to 9 pm. One strong recommendation: get there early for first dibs! During my visit at 11 am on a Saturday, I noticed the house-made grab-and-go (soups, salads, roasted vegetables) were disappearing fast. And this was after the first snow of the season. The good stuff goes early.

Looking for more places like this? Hit the Specialty Markets filter in the Healthy Anywhere app — it surfaces only the best of artisan markets with house-prepared eats and local artisan goods. Regenerative butcher shops too.

Or you can search “hyplocal” to find extra special places with onsite culinary gardens or dedicated nearby farms.

Discover More Specialty Markets Like Bread & Butter with the Healthy Anywhere App

Looking for more spots serving high-quality, thoughtfully prepared meals? The Healthy Anywhere App helps you find top-tier, independently owned eateries committed to fresh, sustainable, and nourishing food—wherever you are.

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