Wheat Ridge Poultry & Meats, a local institution since 1942, has been ordered to close its doors indefinitely due to a storm of financial issues and personal misfortune. The shop’s future now hinges on the owner’s payment of years of owed taxes back to the city.
For many locals, the butcher shop at 5650 W. 29th Avenue is a staple of the Wheat Ridge community. The business has donated tens of tons of food to local pantries, provided over 500 holiday meals to those in need, and supplied wild game scraps to animal sanctuaries. It was the first business in Wheat Ridge to open a community fridge, and has built a loyal customer base through high-quality offerings and friendly service. “Wheat Ridge Poultry and Meats was there for us during the pandemic, and is more than a butcher, it is part of the community,” one resident wrote on the Wheat Ridge Poultry & Meats website.
But behind the scenes, financial troubles have been building for years.
Amanda Harrison, the city’s Communications and Engagement Manager, says the business has only been compliant in paying taxes about 15% of the time since 2016, when current owner Jessica Bobitsky and her late husband, Rob, bought it. According to Wheat Ridge City Treasurer Chris Miller, the shop has consistently missed tax payments dating back to around 2019, but tax debt from 2022-2024 is what the city is pursuing legally.
From this period, the business owes roughly $87,000 in unpaid sales tax, penalties, and interest. “When customers go to the counter, they pay that additional amount in sales tax,” Miller says. “It’s the business’s responsibility to remit that back to the city, and then we use it to run the city – police services, roads, parks, and so forth. This is just money they’ve collected from their customers and failed to turn that back into the city.”
In addition to the city’s claims, multiple vendors are reportedly still awaiting payment for past services provided to Wheat Ridge Poultry & Meats. These vendors have asked to remain anonymous, but their accounts suggest that the taxes owed are just one entry in a longer list of debts.
The city tried working with Bobitsky on two payment plans, then issued two liens and, eventually, a distraint warrant, seizing the property on May 12. An auction to sell assets is scheduled for July 9, and the shop’s ownership has until 24 hours beforehand to stop the proceedings by paying the amount owed.
Bobitsky has not disputed the debt with the city, but has publicly called for understanding and help. On a petition posted to Change.org, she wrote: “Over the past few years, our family has been challenged with cancer, the loss of parents, attempted suicide, double-digit theft from a business associate, and the sudden and unexpected loss of my husband.” Bobitsky’s husband, Rob, died of cancer in March 2024.
When asked what led to the missed payments, Bobitsky is concise: “We got behind and life blew up.” Speaking from a hospital bed at the new Intermountain Health Lutheran Hospital, she described the toll recent years have taken, including cancer diagnoses, surgery, her husband’s death, relatives’ attempted suicide, and two other relatives’ deaths. “The stress has caused me to have significant [multiple sclerosis] flare-ups which make it difficult for me to walk or drive,” she says. “It’s been a rough few years, and I became lost and unable to even open mail, or clean, or get out of bed some days.”
Bobitsky doesn’t blame her problems on the city. “I’ve said it since day one, everyone at the city has been pleasant and are doing their job,” she says. However, Bobitsky expresses a desire for increased cooperation from the city. “I made a large payment five days before the raid – and I call it a raid because it looked like every police unit was at our property, like we were dealing fentanyl out the back,” she says. “When I made the payment, I told the city I was trying to sell my extra equipment so I could pay them off and even told them they could come to the sale and have the check payable to them.” She says the city turned down this offer.
“Until the $11,000 in fees was added, we’d paid half of the actual tax balance, minus interest and penalties,” she adds. “We were making progress with payments, but now with the fees, it’s like we’re back to square one. I want to pay the taxes due, but have the city … work with me on these fees and interest instead of saying ‘Absolutely not.’”
City representatives see the situation differently. “She has made no request to have penalties and fees waived,” Harrison says. “The city would be willing to work with her if she came to the table ready and willing to turn in the money she collected from customers, but our city charter requires her to actually come ready and willing to pay the debt before we can negotiate those penalties and interest.”
“We strive to offer an individualized approach,” Harrison adds. “We’re a small enough city where our finance manager will literally sit down with a struggling business owner as much as they need him to. We worked together to develop these payment plans, and she failed to continue on both of those plans, both times.”
Bobitsky’s family has also launched a GoFundMe campaign, which, as of early June, had raised over $19,000 before being closed. However, Miller noted that none of that money has yet gone to the city. “The GoFundMe is set up by private individuals, and there’s no legal obligation for them to remit that money to the city,” he says.
According to Bobitsky, even if the debt is paid in time, the business may no longer have a location, as the building’s landlord plans not to renew Bobitsky’s lease. “Unless my team member … can get the lease, Wheat Ridge Poultry will no longer be at the corner of 29th and Depew,” she says.
As for what the shop means to Bobitsky and her family: “The shop is our everything, it is where our family, blood and non-blood, works. It’s where we get to spend time with our community and friends,” she says. “I want our team to be able to get back to business … and just be open for our neighbors who need and want us in the community.”
Both Bobitsky and the city agree that the business has deep community roots, but the financial gap has yet to be bridged. “We’d really like to see this business stay open,” Miller says. “I can’t think of any time during my tenure … that we’ve ever had to do this to a business. But we just can’t allow a business to operate outside of the rules. It’s really unfair to, first and foremost, the customers that pay those sales taxes, and it’s unfair to other businesses that are in compliance with the law.”
Unless drastic changes take place, the July 9 auction may mark the definitive end to an 82-year-old Wheat Ridge business.
