Dave Krick

I was born right here in downtown Boise – on 8th Street. I grew up doing what every privileged white boy from Boise did in the 80s — going to keggers and fixing up old cars with my Dad. Strangely, the themes of fixing broken things and beer have stayed with me.  

“I grew up doing what every privileged white boy from Boise did in the 80s — going to keggers and fixing up old cars with my Dad. Strangely, the themes of fixing broken things and beer have stayed with me.”

Back when I was going to college my brother opened a restaurant bar in Seattle called the Red Door Alehouse. During trips to visit him there I got to meet Kurt and Rob Widmer and Paul Shipman from Redhook Brewery and I just fell in love with craft beer. It was cool. I liked the presentation of it. It took three years to convince my brother to move to Boise, and to convince myself to leave a job at HP that I could not believe how much they were paying me to do. We took the risk and opened Bittercreek in ’94.

I actually went off to school in Germany and went through a brewing science program and earned my master brewer certificate. At the time there were only 88 of us in the country that had been certified as master brewers.

Developing restaurants has become a fun activity for my wife and I; she is far more creative than me. Together, we opened Red Feather in 2002, and Diablo & Sons in 2019.

Being in the food business, one area that we've spent a lot of time on is knowing where our food comes from, getting to know the farmers that we buy food from, and the struggles that they face to continue to do what they do. One of the big things that motivates me is finding ways to connect our community to the people who are really making it work — and the structure that helps our local food system come together.

“One of the big things that motivates me is finding ways to connect our community to the people who are really making it work — and the structure that helps our local food system come together.”

In the restaurant industry feeding people is a wasteful act, but it doesn’t have to be. We can do it in a way that is more communally minded and lets those processes be aggregated. Good business is eliminating waste. When we produce in less wasteful ways, we serve a real need in the world. One way is sending less to the landfill. We created Urban Worm as a composting operation to support our restaurants, simply using worms to consume our clean compost and a lot of our paper goods, and any clean or inanimate materials that we have.

Another good example of efficiency has been moving restaurant operations out into the street downtown. It’s an effort that's been going on for some time, even with alleys - thinking about how we can repurpose them as public space and using that land for purposes other than just moving cars around. Getting it back to people on bikes and those who are walking around and to businesses to be able to spill out onto the street, this is good work. Pretty strange coming from a kid who grew up cruising Main!

A lot of people want Boise to be like Portland or Seattle – and we want it to be like Boise. I mean, I love Boise for what Boise is. It's this unique town and there's a lot of things that define it.

I don't travel a ton, but when I do, I tell people about downtown Boise, how walkable and connected it is and how great the community is. I also mention that I know a guy who can hook them up with a really good beer.

“I don't travel a ton, but when I do, I tell people about downtown Boise, how walkable and connected it is and how great the community is. I also mention that I know a guy who can hook them up with a really good beer.”