Juan Padró may be as well known for his community service as he is for his 14 award-winning restaurants that include three Tap & Burger locations, BarDough, Senor Bear, Morin, Ash’Kara and Mister Oso. As the Denver Business Journal reported last October, when the Coronavirus hit, Juan and his partners “worried first about workers”, keeping them on benefits, and operating one of their restaurants as a kitchen focused on “producing free meals for restaurant-industry workers” and supporting local nonprofits.

Juan’s commitment to the community was nourished by his upbringing, growing up in a small town in Massachusetts, the son of an Irish-Catholic mother and a father from Puerto Rico. Many Puerto Ricans seeking economic opportunity “came to Western New England to pick tobacco,” Juan says, “and they left their families behind, like a lot of immigrant workers. They sent money back home. Like any other situation, when you’re away from your family for a long time, there’s all kind of issues - depression, substance abuse.” Juan’s father was a social worker who worked with the community, and later took a position with the U.S. Department of Labor as a manpower specialist. “He would go to farms around the country,” Juan says, “making sure that the immigrant workers were getting treated properly, which was incredibly challenging in the 70s and 80s.”  

Juan’s mother, who spent her early adulthood in a convent, later became a guidance counselor, a chemistry teacher and eventually an assistant principal of a vocational school in Worcester.

Juan credits his upbringing for his career today. “My father loved Puerto Rico. I was brought up in that culture. I was brought up with that food. My father did all the cooking. He was an incredible cook. What eventually led me to hospitality was the fact that, in my house, my mother would set a table for 10 knowing some people would come over, and she’d be like, ‘Juan, how many people are coming over.’ And he would say, ‘I don’t know, there could be 4 or 40.’”  

That welcoming attitude extended to other aspects of their life as well. “My house was like a restaurant,” Juan recalls. “My parents had parties every weekend. And our front door was never locked; there was never a key. When my Dad passed away [18 months ago], with my mother alone in this big house, that was the first time the front door was locked. My parents went to Puerto Rico for months at a time, it was never locked. You could walk in if you needed a place to stay.”

Juan grew up playing hockey and baseball. His first job was washing dishes at Ronnies Seafood and Ice Cream in Worcester County, “which was tough because it was all fried fish. Raking your knuckles, bleeding every night when I got home. Then I got promoted the near year, to scooping ice cream.”

In college, Juan worked at a place called the Pub in Amherst, “which was a hot spot.”

After graduation, Juan worked the front door in a cantina in Boston, the Cactus Club, while searching for other opportunities. His fortunes changed one evening when he encountered a customer who needed assistance. “He was intoxicated,” Juan recalls. “I couldn’t wake him up. So I grabbed his wallet and looked at his address.  I got in a cab with him and took him to his home in Brookline.” The man’s wife asked for Juan’s contact information. The next day, the man reached out to Juan to thank him and offered to let him know if there’s anything he can do for him. “I noticed the signature on his email; he was a Senior Vice President of a bank. I said, ‘I need a job.’ I got hired as a mutual fund accountant. My mother was appalled because I was never any good at math, and the group I was in managed the state of Massachusetts’ teachers’ pension.”

From that position in the bank, Juan went on to a successful career in the recruiting industry (which included a stint in Colorado) focusing on financial services and information technology. It was in one of those positions, at a company called BusinessEdge Solutions that Juan met the person he credits as his professional mentor, Andy Campbell. “I literally sat in an office with him, back-to-back, for four months, and learned everything I know about how to manage people, when to have appropriate conversations, and what that looks like. Just an incredible human being. “

Juan returned to Colorado in 2010 to open his first restaurant, Highland Tap & Burger. Juan originally planned only to engage as an investor, but eventually assumed a management role along with his then-wife (and now best friend and business partner) Katie O’Shea, who he describes as “brilliant, an investment banker with a master’s in mathematics from Harvard.”  

For the first two years, Juan continued to work for a management consulting company. “We had no salaries at the bar, so we had other jobs. That’s the way it works. By 2012, we had paid off our debt at Highland and we started to take salaries, and this was going to be our career. I don’t think we knew that we’d be at 14 stores in 10 years, across two states, but that’s where we’re at.”

Juan describes the roles of his restaurant group’s talented leadership team as they plan for continued expansion: “Kevin Eddy is the restaurant development guy, and Max MacKissock is the culinary director. I curate the opportunities, cut the deals, and deal with the banks, lawyers and realtors, investors. Katie is the CFO and she does all the financial management.”