08/22/2026
PLEASE READ! ❤️🍕
Today marks 9 YEARS of Blue Pan Pizza in Congress Park.
Nine years.
It’s hard to put into a caption what this location has meant to us, because opening Congress Park wasn't simply opening another restaurant. At the time, it felt like taking the biggest leap we had made yet.
And believe it or not, Congress Park was actually part of the plan before West Highlands.
We had originally tried to make this location happen, but the pieces didn't come together. So we kept moving. We opened in West Highlands, put our heads down, made a whole lot of pizza, and spent the next two years building Blue Pan.
Then we got another opportunity.
Congress Park was finally happening.
We were excited. We were terrified. And in a lot of ways, opening restaurant #2 felt even scarier than opening the first.
It was a bigger space. A bigger investment. More employees. More equipment. More expectations. And absolutely no guarantee that what we had built in West Highlands was going to translate to another Denver neighborhood.
If you swipe through some of the old photos we're sharing today, you'll see what those early days really looked like.
Testing equipment. Hanging things ourselves. Friends and family stopping by. Our team figuring things out together. Long days, late nights and a whole lot of learning as we turned an empty space on 12th Avenue into a Blue Pan.
There wasn't some giant restaurant group behind us.
There still isn't.
Blue Pan was, and remains, a family-owned and operated business.
What made Congress Park work was an incredible group of employees, friends, family members, neighbors and customers who believed in what we were trying to build.
Some of those employees are still with us today. Others have gone on to completely different chapters of their lives. But if you've ever worked inside these walls — whether it was nine years ago or nine days ago — thank you. You helped build this place, and a piece of Blue Pan's story belongs to you.
And Congress Park… you showed up for us. ❤️
You turned this restaurant into something bigger than we ever imagined. You've celebrated birthdays here. Brought your kids here. Ordered pizza for Sunday football.
