DENVER — While most people across Colorado will be sweating it out the next few days, some are packing extra layers to take to work.
At Stillman Wholesale Meats in north Denver, employees spend their days working inside coolers and freezers. It can be easy to forget the misery outside.
“Outside? I don’t know, I haven’t checked the temp, but it's got to be close to 100 right?” joked Nick Roben, whose family opened Stillman in the 1970s.
“It’s a nice place to come get away from the heat.”
Roben said they keep their loading dock temperature set at about 40 degrees. The cooler sits at a cool 32 degrees. And the freezer? Negative 5!
Employees at this warehouse dress in layers.
“Yeah, it is funny. People are outside sweating, people here, we have to keep it cold, keep the jacket on all the time,” said Juan Covarrubias, a manager on the Stillman team. “I wear two jackets and a sweater.”
“Usually they’ve got some bib overalls on, some nice thick wool socks, probably four layers underneath overalls,” Roben added. ” I mean, they stay warm.”
Roben said the cold air is necessary to their business — moving hundreds of thousands of pounds of meat through the door every week. They work with grocery stores, restaurants, and small-businesses' meat processors.
The warehouse has a special room just for the machinery that keeps the building cold. And it doesn’t come cheap.
“It’s huge – I think it's $15,000 a month for electricity to keep this place cold,” Roben said with a laugh. “Just the cost of doing business, no doubt about it.”
And while the freezers are a nice reprieve from the summer heat, they offer a break in the wintertime, too. Roben said sometimes the loading dock is warmer than the outside temperature.
Mother Nature can bring the extremes, and the team at Stillman Wholesale Meats will simply go… inside.