Lazy Fox Artisan Goods to open

Thermopolis newcomers Ian Edmiston and Nels Kelley are opening a new business called Lazy Fox Artisan Goods.

This past summer at the local Farmer’s Market they tested the waters with some of their products and had a very positive response. Many citizens encouraged them about opening up their own shop. Edmiston and Kelley said they felt a warm welcome from the community.

Edmiston said, “We’re opening a full-service bakery and we plan on doing some sandwiches and soups. Not carrying a really big menu per se, but everything that we’re going to sell on the side will be there to highlight the bread products that we make. We’ll be doing breads, danish, pastries and old-world style bagels. We’re going to be a kind of an old-world style bakery.”

Their backstory is also pretty remarkable in turning “life’s lemons into lemonade.” Edmiston described that they moved up to Thermopolis with a tech job from Denver. Edminston was with the company for 12 years and they gave him permission to move up here with his job. The company even signed a document for their mortgage application saying they can work remotely. However, the day after they arrived in Thermopolis, the company laid off him just after buying the home.

Edmiston said it was, “a little bit of a shocker. So, I’ve been a chef’s apprentice at the Broadmoor Hotel down in Colorado Springs a while back and worked in the bakery there for about half a year to a year. I graduated from the apprenticeship there and I’ve always loved culinary arts. But I always told myself I would open my own place if I ever had the opportunity. So we just started making some small things for the Farmer’s Market. Just to do something in my time, all the free time I now had.”

Edmiston was laid off in early June, and the Farmer’s Market proved to be a good experiment. Edmiston said, “I was doing jams and a few loaves of bread and a few other things.” But there were some other vendors also doing amazing jams, and he didn’t want to compete. So, Edmiston said, “I’m going to shift my focus. I don’t want to cross over anything. So I started making more breads and then because I had all that bakery knowledge I was like, I knew how to make pastries like old world style danish and cheese danish and stuff like that. So I started making danishes and people loved it. Then we started making Alberta bars, which are a shortbread bar with fresh jam filling and a granola crumb topping. Then people started coming up and asking me at the Farmer’s Market saying, ‘Hey are you going to open a bakery in town? Will we be able to get your stuff after the Farmers Market’s closed down?’ And I thought about it and I was like oh we’ll see how that goes.”

So Edmiston and his husband Nels Kelley cashed in their 401k and found a building, the old location of The Front Porch, at 536 Arapahoe.

They are aiming for a soft opening on October 22 and aiming for a hard opening on November 5. Their regular business hours will be Thursday thru Monday at 7:30 a.m. to 6 p.m.