Daniel Ramirez, CEO of Ramirez Hospitality Group, is a firm believer in his grandmother’s maxim: “Donde come uno, comen cien,” or “Where one eats, a hundred eat.”
“Every new guest who comes into our restaurant and enjoys our family’s recipes is another seat added to my grandmother’s table,” said Ramirez, who co-owns Los Dos Potrillos Mexican restaurant. “There’s always room for more.”
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The family-owned restaurant, which has six locations in the Denver metro area, will add two more seats to the family table in 2027 with new locations in Colorado Springs and Loveland, Ramirez said.
The new Colorado Springs location will be in the former On The Border Mexican Grill and Cantina at 5832 Barnes Road, which permanently closed its doors earlier this year. The building’s availability created an opportunity for LDP to serve a growing customer base.
“We listened to our guests,” Ramirez said. “Our closest location to Colorado Springs is in Castle Rock, and we have a lot of guests who travel from the Springs to that location. They have been asking if we can extend our grandmother’s table to the Springs, and I think we can.”
On the Border Mexican Grill and Cantina, 5832 Barnes Road, closed earlier this year. (Breeanna Jent, The Gazette)
Founded by José and Martha Ramirez in 2002, Los Dos Potrillos grew from a single restaurant in Centennial into a generational Colorado brand built on two family kitchens, the Ramirez and Delgado households of Jerez, Zacatecas, merged into one dining room.
“Dad came from a family of 15. Mom came from a family of eight,” Ramirez said. “So our families were feeding the masses long before there was ever any talk about a restaurant.”
The proprietary family recipes have been passed down from generation to generation, so today’s dishes are as close to the originals as possible, Ramirez explained.
“So many of my grandmother’s recipes are ‘a pinch of this,’ or ‘a dash of that,’” he said. “We’ve come pretty close, and our guests appreciate it.”
Each of the restaurant’s locations features a “Wall of Traditions” with photographs spanning three generations: the households in Jerez that spawned the original recipes; the family that opened the first Los Dos Potrillos location in Centennial; and the Ramirez family of today. The Colorado Springs and Loveland locations will each have their own Wall of Traditions, Ramirez said.
“That’s important to us because we believe our authentic family tradition story is one of the things that makes us stand out,” he said. “Guests will be able to come in and begin to create their own traditions.”
Customer service is a bedrock of the Ramirez family ethos. Diners should feel welcomed and appreciated when they walk in, and satisfied when they walk out. That’s why he refers to them as “guests” instead of “customers.”
“When guests walk in, they become part of the family,” he said. “We believe that, and we want our guests to feel that way.”
An advance team has already begun work on the infrastructure changes that will transform the former On the Border location into Los Dos Potrillos’s seventh restaurant, hopefully no later than March.
It will be a new location, but it will boast the same dishes — including beans and rice, tacos, shredded beef, carnitas, salsa verde and tomatillos — that have won state and national awards, Ramirez said.
“We also have two breweries, one in Castle Rock and one in Parker, and we’ll be bringing our proprietary beer to the Springs as well,” Ramirez said.
The Ramirez Hospitality Group hopes to open two or three new locations in Colorado each year, he said.
“The goal is to keep bringing my grandmother’s table to new communities across the Rocky Mountain region,” he said. “We’re excited about opening in Colorado Springs. We’re here to stay and be a part of the community. That’s the whole point.”
Dining and Cooking