Eats & Beats: Denver’s guru of the sandwich – Mr. Lucky

This portion of the interview above has been edited for length and clarity:

STEVE: A guy walks in, and we've got a song named after him. Mr. Lucky is in the room. Galen Juracek, from Mr. Lucky's Sandwiches. You've accepted the moniker now.

GALEN: I mean, to an extent yes.

STEVE: Well, although you have a philosophy on luck and sandwich making in Denver.

GALEN: Yes, that's true.

STEVE: What is that?

GALEN: Luck means nothing if you're not prepared.

ABI: Yes.

STEVE: Mr. Lucky's, they've got the location there on 6^th and Washington right there. And there's another one on the north side.

GALEN: Yes. LoHi, as they term it these days.

STEVE: Okay, whatever. Where is it?

GALEN: 33rd and Tejon.

STEVE: Okay. And yeah, welcome to the fray, man. Sandwich business is bloodsport around here. It's like, you got coupons, you're fighting, and big companies with TV ads.

GALEN: I think it's the restaurant industry in general, yeah. But a sandwich is definitely a sliver of that. It’s very competitive in this city.

STEVE: Well, you're competing well, because Abi walked in a while ago with some sandwiches and said, “Here, try these.” And I think I went with the Bird Basil, and it was like, “Oh, my. This is different.” So, how do you get the difference? How do you stand out in a crowded sandwich marketplace?

GALEN: It's difficult. It's difficult. The first and foremost is my team. The employees making sandwiches with love matter. The customer can taste that. Having the right products is very important as well. Fresh bread every day, caring about the ingredients, and caring about the details is the other thing that's really important.

STEVE: There's another thing on the menu I wanted to shout out, but let me introduce you to our sandwich geek. Her name is Abi Clark.

ABI: Sorry.

STEVE: She knows sandwiches. I'm just going to sit back and watch the philosophy.

ABI: Yeah. Product of deli-land, New York. So, I was on a quest to find a sandwich spot here. That's how I came across Mr. Lucky's, and I went to the OG location on 6th. So, I got to ask, with sandwiches, I think there's a philosophy to them, because I'm somebody that likes a lot of things a lot. I have a pretty wide palette. So, at one point, I was putting everything on the sandwich and then it just becomes kind of unruly and hard to eat. So, I wanted to ask what your philosophy is on a good sandwich ingredient wise. Do you load it up? Are you really particular with what goes on there? Do you always have a twist?

GALEN: We are very particular. Like I said, it's not dissimilar from pizza. It begins with the bread. So, you'll find a lot of places that will automatically toast everything that they do. Maybe they want to hide their bread. Maybe they're not comfortable with the fresh bread that they get or that they make. So, it starts with the bread. But our philosophy is every bite matters and a bite on the outside of the sandwich should be consistent with a bite on the inside of the sandwich. So, if you overload it one direction or you top it one side or the other, it won't taste the same in the middle as it does on the edge. So, it's really important to have the ingredients evenly spread out.

ABI: I've definitely had to rearrange a few sandwiches in my life to make sure I had a good bite.

STEVE: I know, right?

ABI: So yeah, not the case at Mr. Lucky's.

STEVE: Okay. Galen Juracek from Mr. Lucky's. You've thrown down the gauntlet. I mean, you're teaching people how to make a good sandwich, right?

GALEN: Well, I don't want to give everything away.

STEVE: Doing the thing is — you can know the thing, but it's still hard to do the thing. Sandwich after sandwich after sandwich.

GALEN: Yeah. It's about consistency. It's about paying attention to the details. Anybody can have a good experience one time, but in the restaurant game, it's about building up your customer base and making sure that you deliver a consistent product visit after visit.

STEVE: It's Eats and Beats Wednesday. We're talking with Galen Juracek from Mr. Lucky's, the website, MrLuckysCO.com. This Avocado Almond. I never even considered putting almonds on a sandwich before.

GALEN: Yeah, well, we want to make sure we get some protein on that sandwich. We want a little bite and crunch to it. And again, we can slap some vegetables on a sandwich and call it our veggie sandwich. Or we could come up with something a little bit different and make sure that it's consistent and memorable.

ABI: Yeah, that's the twist. I definitely had nuts on the sandwich before I walked away, and I haven't left — every time I return, I have the same thing: the chicken salad with the brown sugar pecans, which is that little twist that you're unexpecting. So, I also really love being that you've been in the sandwich business for 25 years. You're pretty homegrown here in Colorado. You have a couple of locally named sandwiches, like The 6^th Ave and The 7^th Ave. Do you have any super — what are your super popular sandwiches that you feel like are the ones that are repeat?

GALEN: Well, in the sandwich game it begins and ends with the Italian sandwich.

ABI: That's so true.

GALEN: You've got to put your mark on the town with the Italian, which I think we do very well, and we are in the conversation for the best one in the city. And some of those regional or location-based sandwiches are very popular. 6^th Avenue, like a spicy roast beef, was my first love when I purchased this business in 2017. So yeah, those are two that stand out to me. We're preparing everything from scratch that we can. So, the roast beef we cook ourselves and the pork we do ourselves. So, anything that we can create by hand, we do. So that usually goes quite a ways with the customer.

STEVE: Well, he's accepted the moniker, but luck has nothing to do with it. Mr. Lucky's Sandwiches. Galen Juracek. It's good to have you in town, man. I love these stories because I'm sure we all thought, “Hey, 2017 things are rolling, things are rolling. 2020 hits, but you're still standing,”

GALEN: Thankfully, still standing. It's been a grind. The restaurant business in general is a grind. There's no way I could have done it without the people on my team and fantastic landlords. We were kind of all in the same boat in 2020. And without reasonable people, it might not be in this situation right now.

STEVE: Yeah, man. Well, a place like Mr. Lucky's, man, that's part of living in a city or a community where you've got a joint. You got a spot.

ABI: Yeah.

GALEN: Well, it's great to see repeat customers. It's great to see when their friends come to town, they come visit us. There is an aspect of taking your people to your spot.

ABI: That's so true.

GALEN: And that's one of the things that we want to provide to Denver, is being one of those spots that hasn't necessarily been taken over, so to speak, if you know what I mean.

STEVE: Alright. Your locations again from Mr. Lucky's.

GALEN: Yeah. We're in Cap Hill, 6th Ave and Washington, and then 3326 Tejon Street in LoHi, or North Denver.

STEVE: The website address is mrluckysco.com. Our guest is Galen Juracek. Abi has a ton more questions, but we're out of time. We're going to talk about sprouts, and how do you get the right sprout? The tomatoes, they're not all equal. Look at that. You can't put that tomato on there. It's not ready.

GALEN: Well, it's got to be balanced like everything in your life.

ABI: Yes. So true.

STEVE: He sounds like that Bosch detective. He's like, “Every bite matters.”

ABI: Life is like a sandwich.

STEVE: “Or no bite matters.”

GALEN: If you get everything stuck in the fold, it just doesn't work out the right way.

STEVE: See, that's the guy I'm going to learn. I'm going to eat. I'm going to be happy. Galen Juracek, it's mrluckysco.com. Good to have you around, man. Good to have you.

GALEN: Thank you for having me. I appreciate it so much.