DENVER — Before Dan Klehm became a successful restaurant executive at companies like Applebee’s, Illegal Pete’s and Cheba Hut, he faced several low points as a teen and young man.
Starting at age 13, he spent about a decade in and out of the criminal justice system in California.
“I grew up in a very violent home,” he told Denver7. “I have three siblings that are dead from drugs and alcohol. I was an addict for 40 years. I got sober in 2023, the day that we started this.”
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Klehm left his executive career, looking for “something that made an impact.” So he and his kids, ranging in age from 20 to 36, started Convict Coffee.
“It’s a pretty slap-you-in-the-face name,” he said. “It's meant to be. It's meant to get people kind of curious, ‘Why do we exist?’ Maybe dig into a little bit more and understand like what the current state of the justice system is today.
“We raise money through selling coffee for causes that reduce recidivism and re-arrest rates in the U.S.,” he explained, adding the company has donated roughly $200,000 for those causes.
Klehm says those causes include 25 cents from every drink going to a different cause every 90 days.
He also says Convict works with the Realness Project, advocating for mental health in prisons. Their cold brew beans are roasted by women in a vocational training program inside the Denver Women's Correctional Facility. Their baked goods come from Arise Baking, which works with at-risk youth around the city, and Treasure House of Hope, a domestic violence shelter for women.
The quest to help those in the criminal justice system comes from Klehm’s own journey.
“Whether you're in prison 20 years, you're in prison two years, it affects you,” he said. “And for me, you know, I came out in a certain situation, a lot of anger, a different kind of view of the world, and it continued to kind of perpetuate assault in my life.”
Convict Coffee first opened in Parker, before a second location on East Evans Avenue near the University of Denver. Now, its third location sits near Colfax Avenue and York Street in Denver.
“Sixteenth Street Mall, I feel like you can get that experience anywhere in the country,” Klehm said. “You go to any big city and find something like that. I feel like Colfax is a very unique beast that only really exists in Denver, and I think it is the true hub of Denver and the true hub of Colorado. And if you want to be a relevant brand, you got to be here.”
Next door, coincidentally, is a barber shop cut from the same cloth. R&R Head Labs recruits barbers coming out of prison.
“Certainly that brings challenges that are unique and different,” Founder Jamie Repenning told Denver7. “But it also brings some really cool skills that they built over the years… If you're cutting hair in prison… you're going to have to do everybody's hair, whatever sits in your chair, which means you're getting practice across a much wider variety, and you're building your skill set to a level that you don't get from someone coming straight out of school.
“My guys can do everything, and often they have 10 to 15 years of experience,” he added. “So I have the best hiring pipeline of anybody.”
Repenning says the idea came from a time in 1996, when the best candidate for a job he was hiring for was coming out of prison.
“I call him the next day to tell him he got the job, and he's like, ‘Oh, hey, hang on. I just feel like there's something you need to know. I just got out of prison after 28 years. I murdered my best friend at a drug deal when I was 18.’ That kind of freaked me out,” he recalled. “Never, never had someone tell me a story like that. So, you know, my first reaction was, "Whoa! What do I need to worry about? Is this going to guy have trouble controlling his temper, violence, swearing?’ None of that was true. Like, he was an awesome employee from day one. First guy to come in, last guy to leave.
“I was carrying around a lot of bias. Like I just assumed that someone coming out of prison, especially that long with a violent crime, was someone that I didn't want to be near, that I couldn't trust, et cetera. And he helped me see that you know everybody has tons of potential, and that you're not defined by the worst thing you've done.”
Klehm called the opportunity to open next to R&R one he “had to take.”
“To kind of create a space where it just expands that conversation about how do we, you know, move the justice system forward,” he said. “Instead of just concentrating on staying a punitive system. How do we become a rehabilitative system? How do we make things better for them”
Both Klehm and Repenning believe building community, one cup of coffee or haircut at a time, is a good start.
“The incarceration rate is so high that I think everyone knows someone that's done time,” Klehm said. “Not everyone is always honest about it, and so yeah, we have really deep conversations with people.”
