A blue and white Chomp Donuts & Coffee logo on a digital billboard near the State Street exit in Salt Lake City teases a “coming soon” message to Interstate 80 travelers.

And now that wait is almost over.

The popular Park City-based doughnut shop, which opened its doors to the Kimball Junction flagship store in November, will soon be available to doughnut and coffee lovers in the Wasatch Front with two new locations slated to open this year.

It was always the plan to grow Chomp, said co-owners Jeff Mahin, Rick Nemeroff and Leah Erickson, who reside in Park City.

But the second location — a permanent spot in the newly expanded Delta Center — was a bit of a surprise.

Last year the group sold a fixed menu of doughnuts to individual boxes at the Delta Center, so a permanent spot, not just a temporary kiosk, is a big step up, said Nemeroff.  

There, they’ll make cake doughnuts in plain, cinnamon sugar or colored sugar — blue for the Utah Mammoths’ hockey games and purple for Utah Jazz basketball games — sold fresh from the fryer. Two dipping sauces will also be available: chocolate fudge and brown butter salted caramel. It’ll all be served in a custom box designed to bring back to seats.

“The invitation to be in the Delta Center, that was a big thing for us … to get that opportunity to get ourselves into an arena setting, which was not part of the original plan,” said Nemeroff. “The things that we’re offering at Delta Center are not going to be the same things we offer in the store, and vice versa.”

It’s also proof that the breakfast pastry isn’t just for breakfast, he said. Through the business’ catering arm, Nemeroff said Chomp has seen plenty of demand regardless of the time of day.

“People want hot, fresh donuts anytime they can get them,” he joked.

The Delta Center location will open in time for the Sept. 26 Utah Mammoths home opener, but the work won’t slow down for the Chomp team. 

Another location expected to open before the end of the year is also planned for Downtown Salt Lake City at the Seraph apartment building off South Temple and State Street.

When choosing another full-service doughnut and coffee shop, chef Manin said it was important to be near a residential area, similar to the existing Kimball Junction spot.  

“It’s just a really cool epicenter,” Manin said. “The college is right down the street. The church is there. The mall is there. You have a ton of residential. I think there’s going to be more office parties with donuts, and so it’s a perfect location to showcase our hospitality.”

There, it’ll be the same dialed-in strategy in Park City: a core menu of doughnuts made fresh daily with limited releases of seasonal flavors, plus the same high-quality, custom roasted coffee.

“Opening in Salt Lake is going to be really exciting because we kind of know what works. We know what our ethos is. We have a year under our belts,” Manin said.

Included in that ethos is a commitment to first responders and educators, who receive 20% off in stores, said Erickson.

Erickson oversees the catering and events side of the business and said the expansion to Salt Lake City should bring more of those opportunities, too.

“I think we’re going to be in more homes, be at more school events, be in more graduation parties, birthday parties, weddings, baby showers,” she said. “I’m really excited to bring this down to Salt Lake. I think that will just be a great addition.”

Manin said they always wanted to open in Park City, where they could serve a smaller community and there were fewer doughnut options. But Salt Lake City is the next step in their goal of becoming “the Utah doughnut.”

“I think from a culinary perspective, Salt Lake City seems to be growing. You have the Michelin guide that’s come here. You have some James Beard finalists coming here. You have Chef’s Table picking Park City for its annual Chef’s Table (Festival),” Manin said. “We can be a part of that.”

Operations will continue as usual at the Park City location, with a few fall special flavors soon to be announced, the three said. Chomp is still taking flavor suggestions from visitors, which is how the cookies and cream doughnut was born, and continues to train its staff for fine-dining level hospitality. 

“We’re still so involved in Park City,” said Erickson. “We’re still present there and always will be. But I’m just so excited and really proud of us to have built this brand and to be expanding it down into Salt Lake. I think it’s just such a huge milestone for our team.”

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Another year, another one-of-a-kind 100 Mile Meal. 

But it wasn’t just any year for Recycle Utah, the nonprofit that hosts the annual fundraiser dinner that sources every ingredient from within a 100-mile radius of Park City. This was the year the organization was finally ready to show off its vision for its new facility near U.S. 40.

That vision sees the recycling center embracing its role as a community hub for sustainability rather than just a place to take recyclables. On top of major operational improvements like separate bays for public and commercial drop-off and expanded administrative space, the preliminary design also includes space for classrooms and conference rooms. 

There’s also a kitchen, a cafe and event space, retail, and a “fix-it” space for repairing items rather than recycling them. Executive Director Andy Hecht said that dovetails with a thrift store space, too, which he thinks will be a centerpiece of the new facility. 

“We get a lot of things like air fryers that have a broken knob that’s simple to fix, and just having that fix-it space is really helpful,” he said.

A visual rendering of what the exterior could look like shows a black-and-brown, two-story building lined with windows. The interior renders illustrate natural light filling big public spaces with warmth. These images are not the final design, but they’re a big first step informed by a lot of community response, said the nonprofit’s board chair, Heleena Sideris. 

“It’s incredibly exciting. This has been a focal point, a culmination of the last, I would say, six months of intensive iterations and continual refinement,” she said. ”It brings a really emotional side to it, at least for me personally, because it makes that vision just so much more real.” 

The imagined 27,845-square-foot site would sit on a 4.18-acre parcel neighboring the High Valley Transit Sego Lily Campus near Home Depot in Silver Summit. The site is 8.5 times bigger than the Woodbine Way site, and the facility itself would be 4.5 times bigger. The expansion would allow the center to divert 8,000 tons of waste a year, up from 2,000 currently, with a long-term goal of 16,000 tons annually.

“Not only will we be able to process significantly greater volumes of material, but we’ll also have the opportunity to expand beyond household recyclables and begin serving the commercial community as well,” Sideris said. 

Recycle Utah has been on borrowed time since it started in the ’90s, Hecht said. Pinning down a concrete idea for a new facility is challenging because it requires people to agree on what the organization’s future should look like. 

“There needed to be alignment with the board, with the community, with the government, with Park City and Summit County,” Hecht said. “This vision represents solid partnerships … For 35 years we’ve been a great center for Park City, but now we’re growing into being a great center for all of Summit County.”

The need to grow is partially because of how much the county itself has been growing, he said. That has brought an increase in waste generally. Summit County projects Three Mile Landfill will run out of room by 2053. While the county is working to extend the landfill’s lifespan by 10 years, if it did meet capacity, the county would have to start shipping waste out, which would be expensive for residents. 

Recycle Utah’s plan for its new center would allow the facility to handle the increasing demand and to expand alongside it, future-proofing with capacity for brokering more material and even becoming a transfer facility, Hecht said. 

That flexibility is what Sideris said she loves most about the preliminary design. The new center would be a community space, and it should be able to respond to the community’s needs, she said. The center plans to have Lucky Ones Coffee, a Park City-based business dedicated to hiring and empowering people with disabilities, run the cafe and for Waste Less Solutions, a Utah nonprofit focused on diverting food waste, to run the kitchen. She said she’d like to see more partnerships like that, where organizations raise each other’s missions. 

“At the end of the day, we’re really just here to serve the community,” Sideris said. “We really want to have an open dialogue and maintain the ability to pivot whenever needed.”

Recycle Utah in April negotiated a plan with the city to vacate its current location on 1951 Woodbine Way in March 2027 rather than September as originally planned. At that point, the recycling center will set up a temporary facility, probably at the new location, to ensure there’s no disruption in service.

But it’s not time to fund the new facility just yet. 

First, Recycle Utah has to figure out what it will cost, Sideris said. The board will talk with a general contractor to get a ballpark price tag, at which point they’ll begin raising capital. She’d like to see them break ground as early as next spring.

This year’s 100 Mile Meal supported Recycle Utah’s regular operations and will also help with setting up the temporary facility early next year. 

The 11th annual dinner was a celebration of finally reaching a common vision for the organization’s future. The meal, like every year’s, is a partnership with local farmers, who donate the food, and Vail Resorts, who donates the chefs’ time and energy. Diners then fund the nonprofit with a $300 ticket to enjoy a unique meal, this year featuring 28 local producers, many of whom had staff and owners present.

The night itself was a windy gondola ride away at Red Pine Lodge at Park City Mountain resort. Rain passed just before the night began, giving way to a cool cocktail hour outside, where waiters offered appetizers such as soft-cooked quail eggs with hollandaise and pickled onions courtesy of Pando Culinary Farm in Charleston, Ballerina Farm in Kamas and MadSnacks Produce in Oakley. 

Inside, the first course: a rich vichyssoise of crispy onions and herb oil thanks to 3 Springs Land & Livestock in Oakley, Ballerina Farm, Ioulia Greek Olive Oil Company in Park City and Tagge’s Famous Fruit & Veggie Farms in Perry. Plus, a beef carpaccio salad with spiced watermelon, pickled watermelon rind and a honey vinaigrette, all sourced from Canyon Meadows Ranch in Altamont, Copper Moose Farm and Root Revival, both in Park City, and Tagge’s again.

Chef Greg Hansen came out with the Park City Mountain culinary team to a round of applause. This isn’t an easy meal to make, he admitted, but the farmers had come through despite a tough year: a mild winter, a devastating spring frost and a hot summer that was dry, dry, dry until monsoon season brought sudden floods.

“It’s really, really challenging to work with the same food year after year when we get these many years under our belt, to come up with a new menu,” Hansen said. “This is always very challenging, and the farmers make it easier on us than any other thing.”

This year, the farmers donated a lot of chiles, so the culinary team took a southwestern tack, which worked out well, Hansen said. They’d never tried that particular flavor profile before. 

The family-style entrees were grilled lamb tenderloin from 44 Magnum Farm & Ranch in West Mountain and lavender-mint jus from Summit Community Gardens & EATS, chili-braised short rib with honey jus from Canyon Meadows Ranch, Rustling Aspen Farm in Midway and Slide Ridge in Mendon, and a house-smoked chicken with lovage chimichurri from Rustling Aspen, Argyle Acres in Eden and Moonshadow Farm in Hoytsville. 

Finally, a dessert of Utah scones with honey ice cream and berry compote, care of Ballerina Farm, Slide Ridge and Weeks Berries of Paradise. 

Hecht finished off the entrees with a speech about the new center. He thanked the community for all their feedback. 

“People want a place that’s easier to use. That was pretty simple,” Hecht said. “A place that accepts more materials, a place that teaches, a place that inspires, a place that helps us rethink not only what we throw away, but how we reduce, reuse, repair, recycle and take real responsibility for the world around us.”

The evening over, gondolas ferried diners down the dark mountain. This year’s meal had offered an exclusive first glimpse into Recycle Utah’s future, but the wider public can see the designs, too, at the nonprofit’s next monthly free Green Drinks event, 6-8 p.m. on Sept. 15 at 1951 Woodbine Way. 

For more information on Recycle Utah, visit recycleutah.org.

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To the untrained eye, American mahjong, a tile game adapted from the version invented in China, is hard to follow. 

Rather than starting with a familiar deck of cards, the four-player game uses 152 tiles etched with unfamiliar characters. Beautiful, but not intuitive.

To start the game, dealing out tiles is extra complicated in what’s called the “Charleston” phase, a blind exchange of tiles between the players during which they each select their own game strategy based on their collected tiles.

And that’s another thing. Choosing a strategy depends on the National Mahjong League Standard Hands and Rules Card, an annual booklet that changes each year and lists the different types of winning hands. Every player needs a card in order to play.

Try learning while watching? The game is silent, save the clicking of tiles, until a “discard” phase, which sounds like some secret code as players reveal tiles face up: seven bam, one dot, flower, nine crack, three dot, bird bam, green dragon, soap. 

Confusing. 

But for those who take the time to learn, the game is more than just a mental challenge and a mix of strategy and luck. It’s an opportunity to make friends.

That’s what Après Mahjong cofounders Bethany Jordan and Natalie Stouffer realized when they began playing in Park City four years ago. 

“I am from Texas, from Dallas, and I moved here around 2020, and I saw what was happening in Texas,” said Jordan. “When I would go back and visit friends, it was one of those things where it was assumed that we all played mahjong.”

The game has surged in popularity on the East Coast and in the South, especially among middle-aged women, she said. Part of that is due to its history: An American Jewish couple from the Northeast traveled and worked in China in the 1920s, fell in love with the tile game, then brought it back to their community in the United States. By 1932, the National Mahjong League was formed to consolidate the rules and regulations. 

Park City and the West have been behind that curve, so Jordan and Stouffer learned from a mix of guide books and tips from a woman they played tennis with.

More and more people saw them playing and wanted to learn, too, so one day Jordan said, “What if we started a business?” 

“I wanted to go to the pool or just go to a park or whatever and see people playing and be able to join their game. And so our vision was to bring mahjong to the town and start teaching people, and it caught on like wildfire,” Jordan said.

They did the market research and realized there wasn’t a single mahjong business in the state. Stouffer has a background in education and curriculum development, and she had the time and interest, so the two became partners and built out Après Mahjong. Now they have two or three events a day.

“We have private lessons. We have public lessons. We have open play. We do a weekly league. We do tournaments,” said Jordan.

All of it starts with beginner lessons, Stouffer said, and the most important part about the lessons is consistency across instructors.

“We wanted, if you came to a lesson and it was taught by me or anyone else, you’d have a similar experience,” she said. 

First they teach the tiles and tile names, with playful ways of remembering, like with how the soap tile belongs to the dot suit: “Soap makes bubbles. Bubbles are dots.”

Then they build from that knowledge to explain the National Mahjong League card, which lists ways to create winning hands, likening certain aspects to games like Rummikub or cards.

“It’s called scaffolding in education,” said Stouffer. “Your brain tends to hold on to information better if it can connect to prior knowledge that you already know. So we take it step by step.”

Most importantly with the lessons, less is more, Stouffer said. There’s over 1,000 ways to win based on the annual rules card, but it would be overwhelming to teach them all in one lesson. 

“People’s brains jump so far ahead, and then they forget where they are. So we try to just really keep them engaged,” she said.

A lot of the lesson involves learning by doing, so the instructor will lead the group of no more than eight students in a few practice games, helping them decide which strategy to take based on the tiles they’re dealt.

Stacy Miller is one of 12 instructors with the group. She first learned mahjong in 2024 but comes from a gaming family and has a “special affinity” for poker: Each year she goes to Las Vegas to compete in the World Series of Poker. But when she learned the tile game, she became obsessed.

“Mahjong has totally changed my life. I love it so much. I mean, it sounds really weird, but for a game player, I feel like it’s such a challenging, fun game with lots of levels,” she said. “And I also love all the ages. I’ve met so many people doing it.”

She started out playing in the league — a timed version that suits her competitive nature — before being asked to come on as an instructor. As a former English and public speaking professor, Miller agreed.

So far, she said she hasn’t met anyone who couldn’t learn the game, though some, like her 84-year-old mother, took a while to pick it up. 

“You could sit down as a beginner and play the game with just knowing the basics. But the more you play, the more you realize how strategic it is and how you can use defense,” Miller said. “I haven’t gotten bored with it because the longer I’ve played, the deeper I’ve kind of dove into it.” 

It doesn’t necessarily translate from poker, she said, which is more of a mix of skill and luck. Mahjong has more luck involved, but Miller said she loves that it’s more involved. 

“For me, there’s a lot of downtime in poker. You’re sitting there, maybe you’re not involved in a hand, so you’re sitting there waiting for the other people to get finished with the hand,” she said. “With mahjong, I feel like my brain is constantly going. You’re constantly thinking, and there’s no downtime.” 

Stouffer said part of mahjong’s popularity is that it requires more of an investment from players. Not just from the time and financial side, but from having to be fully present during the game. Hardly anyone pulls out their phones for the two hours of open play, she said.

“This is an age where people are so focused on screens that people are craving that analog, non-digital hobby,” said Jordan. “It also uses their brain. And as we age, we see our parents and even some peers suffering with dementia. … We want to keep our brain strong, and this is a game of strategy and thinking.”

After completing at least one lesson, players are invited to open play sessions a few times a week at their new permanent parlor in Park City. 

For at least the first year, Après Mahjong operated as more of a pop-up concept, working with businesses to host events and lessons. But eventually they grew enough to warrant a full-time home.

Stouffer joked that she finally broke after transporting folding tables, chairs, heavy mahjong tile sets and decorations through a snowstorm for an event at Wasatch Wool. That two-hour event turned into more like a four-hour job.

They found the parlor space, the second floor of the Gateway Center off Swede Alley and Heber Avenue, and moved in May.

There, the decorations lean into the ski-town vibe, with plaid tablecloths and vintage ski posters and collage art. But the real decoration is the mahjong tiles. 

Après Mahjong supplies tiles through an ambassador program with brand The Mahjong Line, which specializes in art-inspired tiles. Those sets run about $500 and are decorated with various themes like sea life, Western icons or mountain animals. A tile in their mountain line — a big horn sheep wearing ski goggles — inspired the Après Mahjong logo: a moose with ski goggles.

Open play is $20 for the two hours and set up for all levels.

“We’ve leveled it out by tables, and if you’re a beginner, we’re going to have an instructor there to answer questions. And the whole point is for them to become a part of the community, to feel more confident. You don’t get better unless you play,” said Jordan.

The levels from beginner to advanced are modeled after ski runs, magic carpet all the way to black diamond. Those players finish games in around 15 minutes, while beginners can take closer to an hour.

Jordan said since they started, Après Mahjong has taught or interacted with 1,500 people through events and lessons, and has built a large local community. But it’s also become a space for out-of-towners who know how to play, have the official card, but don’t have a group to play with. Being a space for visitors, especially in such a transient town like Park City, stems from Jordan’s own experience.

“I used to summer here, and it was just our family all summer, and you do crave that interaction with people. It’s like you’re a part of the community, but you’re really not because you’re just here for a few months,” she said. “It would have been so nice if I had had a place to drop in and get to know some people and play the game.”

The two said they’ve begun expanding into Heber City with lessons and plan to grow by providing training for people to start their own business in other towns. They’re also planning to purchase an automatic shuffling table, which makes the play even quicker. 

Still, the community building is the best part because players from different generations get to know each other over the game, Jordan said. Groups naturally have sprouted out and people organize their own game nights with people they’ve met through Après Mahjong.

“We want you to become friends. Keep coming to us, too, but please, the whole point of this is to build this community of friendship and to grow the game of learning and strategy and understanding,” said Jordan.

To learn more or sign up for a lesson, visit apresmahjong.com. 

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Park City-based Top Shelf Professional Bar Services has expanded its offerings to tackle one of the most challenging elements of events in Utah: permitting.

Specifically, single-event permits are required by the Utah Department of Alcoholic Beverage Services for any event that serves or sells alcohol. And in a town like Park City, that’s quite a few.

Casey Metzger, owner of Top Shelf, said in 18 years of business in the state, he’s seen people struggle to navigate those complicated legal waters.

“If anybody’s ever raised their hand, say, ‘Hey, I’ll take care of the catering at the gala, and I’ll get the bar service’ … (then) ‘Keep your hand up if you do it again.’ No one would keep their hand up. It’s that much of a pain in the butt,” he said.

Tanner Lennart is a Salt Lake City-based liquor lawyer. She said Utah is set up as a control state, with plenty of seemingly weird laws. Here, single-event alcohol permits are even required if alcohol is provided with the purchase of a ticket.

“In our state, we have what’s called an express language clause in … the alcohol code, that says if something’s not expressly allowed, then it’s forbidden,” she said. “Any time there is any sale of alcohol at all, even if it’s for a fundraiser, it has to be permitted through the state, and so that’s why it’s necessary, and it’s tightly regulated.”

Businesses in other states can obtain a traveling liquor license, Metzger said, and event organizers can just hire those teams to come in and sell alcohol. Utah doesn’t have those types of licenses.

The single-event process is complicated — despite resources the state provides to try and make it easier, like video walkthroughs — especially if someone hasn’t done it before, Metzger said. There are a lot of moving parts that must be done in a specific order, like needing an OK from the city before submitting the application with the state. He said going out of order can make the process more stressful and risk the applicant not getting approved in time.

“I’ve seen clients crying. I’ve seen clients driving from West Valley for background checks to Coalville to get a permit. And then all of a sudden they close the door … ‘You got to go back down to West Valley, and come back to Coalville Thursday because we’re not open on Tuesday,’” Metzger said. “Those are the things that we just know.”

With his industry knowledge, he’s learned all the right forms, all the right steps and how to cross every t and dot every i. 

For a while, Metzger’s team helped people obtain those necessary permits as “good people with good hearts,” but with the growth of events, especially in the nonprofit sector, they saw an opportunity.

“The amount of fundraising going on in this town is incredible per capita,” he said. “It’s a whole lot different than it was in years past. That seems to be a thing around the state.”

Lennart agreed. In her 15 years working in Utah, she saw the request for single event permits go from a few hundred a year into the thousands as population and interest grows.

Metzger said when he started, the Department of Alcoholic Beverage Services didn’t have a staff position to process permit requests.

Out of the 528 single-event permits already approved for this year by the state, Summit County has the second most at 132 events, under Salt Lake County’s 244 events.

It’s grown to the point where Top Shelf couldn’t spend time walking people through the process like they had before. So Metzger decided to add the service to his existing business.

“Nobody’s done this as a business. There’s a lot of people that will do it for others, but no one said, ‘Hey, we have a proven process and a system that keeps it efficient and that’s affordable and that gives people a peace of mind,’” he said. 

Event Permitting Solutions, or EPS, is modeled after consulting services in other industries like development, Metzger said. In those cases, certain companies are designed entirely to help a builder work through government processes, timelines and approvals, acting as the liaison between the involved parties.

No other group had attempted the same in the alcoholic beverage industry, according to Metzger’s research.

Ginger Wicks, executive director of the Park City Area Restaurant Association, said Metzger’s service should prove useful in town.

“The single-event permitting process, while it is all online, it’s not intuitive, and so if you’re new to trying to pull a single-event permit, it can be very overwhelming,” Wicks said. “Having Casey manage all of that, since he has a clear understanding of the liquor laws and of the licensing process, could be a huge benefit for businesses.”

Especially for nonprofits, she said, who may already be stretched thin. And for events that she manages with the restaurant association, permitting is always an extra hoop members have to jump through. Take Savor the Summit, held annually in June, where restaurants set up for a dinner party on Main Street.

“Because each individual restaurant is serving their own alcohol, each individual restaurant is required to pull their own individual UDABS permit,” Wicks said. “They cannot just move into the street. They have to get permitted by the UDABS to do that.”

Lennart said, as someone who solely works with businesses selling alcohol full time, it’s great to have a business that can help with the single-event part. Especially because of the legal repercussions for getting it wrong.

“The biggest issue is the timing. If you don’t get these permits in on time, which means in on time and correctly, that can mean not being able to sell alcohol at your event. Which … can be a major loss of fundraising,” she said. “Then, if people go ahead and try to do it anyway, that’s illegal.”

Repercussions for selling alcohol without permits can range from civil consequences, like banning a person or group from obtaining a future permit, to criminal or misdemeanor charges, she said, depending on how the state chooses to proceed.

Now, Top Shelf has someone solely trained and dedicated to the process, with three approaches: light guidance, more hands-on or full service.

“It’s great that the state and the city allow people to go out and do this, but … they put a lot of liability on people that don’t necessarily understand the magnitude of what that looks like,” Metzger said. “(By) understanding the good questions to ask, and how to put the initial permits through the local municipalities together … you can get that approval before you get the state approval.”

Top Shelf’s main service is in bartending, which Metzger said is ultimately the best way to round out the experience. 

“It’s like doing a bar at a regular place on Main Street, but you’re busier than the bar’s ever going to be. When’s the last time you went to a bar with 300 people all in there drinking at the same time?” he said.

There’s a safety element to serving alcohol, and having a professional service helps ensure that safety, he said.

“Even if you are successful in getting the permit, there’s still so many rules and regulations that you have to follow, which can be difficult, again, if your primary business isn’t in selling alcohol,” Lennart said.

“We’re experts at that,” Metzger said, “and we guide people the right way so that when people have these events, they don’t have to risk it being shut down. They don’t have to risk … a violation from the state.”

For details on the new Event Permitting Solutions arm of Top Shelf, visit topshelfutah.com/eps.

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Park City has a new, stylish addition to its shopping area.

The boutique Wunderkind, which carries hard-to-find luxury brands, opened at 440 Main Street in May, its fourth location and first in Utah.

The shop sits next to Vuori and directly across the street from The Marquis, placing it in one of the town’s busiest retail areas.

For owner Philip Manghisi, the opening caps off a steady expansion that began in Scottsdale, Arizona. After launching his first store there, he added two more in Montecito, California. Park City marks his boldest move yet.

The choice to set up shop in Utah wasn’t a guess. Wunderkind tested the waters first with month-long pop-up shops, starting in the summer of 2022, at spots like Promontory, Talisker and The St. Regis Deer Valley. Each proved popular, and the brand jumped at the chance to secure a permanent home on Main Street.

“I like to put stores in places where there are not really stores; to open a store in a space that has no access to these brands is a very unique opportunity,” Manghisi said.

Inside Wunderkind, shoppers can discover luxury designer pieces tough to find elsewhere in Utah. The racks and shelves feature shoes, dresses and handbags from Celine, Bottega Veneta, Givenchy, Balenciaga and more.

To keep the collection fresh, Manghisi travels to Europe four times a year with a focus on Paris and Milan. There, he hunts for the latest trends he believes will suit the local community.

“What I learned from my first experience in buying was if you love it, hopefully your clients will love it,” Manghisi said. “I try to think about real people, running around town, etc., and what they would wear for their everyday lives. A touch of fantasy but real clothes.”

Fashion has shaped Manghisi’s life since his teenage years. While studying at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City, he started as a cashier at Jeffrey, a designer retailer.

By 20, he was working as a salesperson. At 21, he earned a promotion to buyer, a role that sent him to Europe 10 times a year to source pieces from established luxury houses and emerging designers alike.

His coworkers at Jeffrey noticed his talent and nicknamed him the “Wunderkind,” German for miracle child or child prodigy. Years later, Manghisi chose that name for his own store.

“During the pandemic, I had a moment of clarity and decided to open my own store,” Manghisi said. “I learned from titans in the industry and have applied that learning for my own thing.”

The atmosphere in the stores achieves a balance between refined and relaxed, a setting that appears well put together without being overly serious by combining sophistication with a touch of playfulness, exactly as was intended.

Manghisi also intends to make himself a part-time resident of Park City, spending his time between Utah and Arizona.

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Heber City-based nonprofit accountant Carol Sonnenberg was sifting through the finances of an AIDS nonprofit in San Diego on the day of Magic Johnson’s November 1991 press conference. The nonprofit’s staff members and volunteers huddled around a TV in the conference room as the basketball star announced to the world that he’d contracted HIV.

“There were people in the building who were really sick and had lost their jobs and lost their homes,” Sonnenberg said. “He gave a very positive message, and it helped turn the tide on how people looked at (HIV and) AIDS because he publicly owned it.”

That same year, she saw the AIDS-focused nonprofits she was auditing be hit with a “fire hose” of funding as the federal government distributed $220 million in grants through the Ryan White Comprehensive AIDS Resources Emergency Act. 

Being a Certified Public Accountant, or CPA, in the nonprofit sector has allowed Sonnenberg to watch life unfold from the unique perspective of a number cruncher. 

Her involvement in nonprofits has also been invaluable in her personal life. For example, when her nephew was born with a heart defect and needed a blood transfusion, she knew how to handle the situation and whom to contact because she had been audit committee chair of the San Diego Blood Bank.

“I knew how to form the family blood bank, and my blood went into my nephew. I would have never been able to do that if I wasn’t on the blood bank board,” she said. “You never know when you’re going to need a nonprofit.”

Sonnenberg’s involvement in nonprofits began with becoming a Girl Scout at 6 years old. It was at a Girl Scout camp where she learned horseback riding, one of her lifelong passions. She later served as the leader of her younger sisters’ and daughter’s troop and audited Girl Scouts San Diego. 

That experience, along with participating in her local Special Olympics with her brother, who has Down syndrome, as a teenager, formed the basis of Sonnenberg’s passion for nonprofit organizations.

Sonnenberg graduated from California State Polytechnic University, Pomona with a bachelor’s degree in business administration in 1988. She began her studies as an equine science major before realizing just how cutthroat and expensive the industry was. But it turned out that auditing was very similar to wrangling horses. 

“Being not just an accountant, but a consultant and a partner to my clients, you have to be brave, and you have to be kind. So, both at the same time,” she said. “If I’m hard with my clients, they’re not going to want to listen. If I’m hard with the horses, they’re not going to want to listen.”

After graduating college, Sonnenberg began working at her father’s CPA firm, which had “hundreds of homeowners associations” and only five nonprofit organizations as clients. But the nonprofits provided Sonnenberg with a greater sense of purpose in her work.

“I’m like, ‘My people!’ So, I would audit those, and I’m like, ‘Can we get more of these?’” she said. “Within 10 years, we had over 100.”

That’s in large part because Sonnenberg began teaching classes at Nonprofit Solutions in San Diego in 1992. The organization, which had launched a year prior, has now taught over 110,000 practitioners how to more effectively run their nonprofit organizations.

Sonnenberg’s involvement began when she drove to their headquarters and asked to teach a class: “How to Save $1,000 on Your Audit.”

“They said, ‘Sure, but we also need someone to teach nonprofit budgeting and nonprofit tax, and we’re not going to pay you.’ And I’m like, ‘What a good deal!’” she said. 

Teaching was an opportunity for Sonnenberg to provide advice to nonprofits before she audited them. Nonprofits were typically “ill prepared” for audits.

“It’s like movers showing up on moving day and your boxes aren’t even packed,” she said.

Volunteer teaching in the sector she was most interested in was not only a smart business move, allowing her to make connections with potential clients, but enjoyable for the same reasons being a Girl Scout troop leader was. Sonnenberg later taught courses about nonprofit finance at University of San Diego as an adjunct professor between 2004 and 2013. 

Putting together audit reports isn’t all “checklists and forms,” but also involves meetings with the nonprofit’s accountant and CEO, culminating in a brief presentation to the board of directors followed by advice and a Q and A. 

“Now that I’ve already visited 100 other nonprofits and I’ve seen best practices and I’ve seen challenges, I say, ‘You know what I saw somewhere else? I think you guys should try this,’” Sonnenberg said. “Speaking in front of people when you mean it, when you care, when you want them to grow and do better is so easy. People don’t want to look at their audit. I get it. … But this is a tool they use to get bigger.”

Some audit findings, like financial oversights or improper internal controls, require that Sonnenberg create a corrective action plan for the organization to execute by its next audit. 

“Sometimes, I get called in in a crisis. Emergency CFO. I’ve had it where someone’s died and they need a replacement, or someone’s committed fraud and they want a limited investigation,” she said. 

Then, lowering her voice to a conspiratorial whisper, Sonnenberg confessed that financial crisis response gigs are the most “fun.” She thinks that’s because her outdoorsy interests have prepared her for all sorts of survival scenarios, even financial ones. 

Sonnenberg now lives in Heber City with her golden retriever, Daphne, and three horses: mama Zeta, her daughter, April — also known as Wink because of her missing eye — and “mean girl” Lucy, short for Lucifer. Whenever Sonnenberg has a bad day or difficult meeting, her solution is to “hug a horse.”

Sonnenberg started her own CPA firm in 2016 and moved to Heber City in 2021 to be closer to her sisters and daughter, who was attending the University of Utah at the time. 

Some Utah nonprofits she’s audited include Wasatch Immigration Project in Park City, Friends of the Bear River Refuge in Brigham City and Utah Nurse Practitioners. She’s also the founding treasurer of Outdoor Access Project, a nonprofit committed to accessible outdoor recreation statewide.

Sonnenberg’s advice to those wanting to start a nonprofit is, in most cases, not to. 

There are about 1.9 million nonprofits in the United States, and over 12,000 of them in Utah, according to Candid, a nonprofit focused on nonprofit data. Chances are, there is already a local nonprofit that meets a particular need, Sonnenberg said.

“I really encourage people before they start one, ‘Do you know one that’s nearby, or now, even remote, that you can join and make better?’” she said. “If you want to start one, then let’s do the accounting right. … If not me, get another accountant. But don’t waste your time on your computer doing your own accounting and finance and banking when you need to do your mission and purpose.”

The post Heber City accountant finds purpose in nonprofit finance appeared first on Park Record.

A localized thunderstorm last week dumped an estimated 2 inches of rain on Wanship in an hour, flooding fields and Gracie’s Farm, a 1-acre food garden owned by the nearby Lodge at Blue Sky.  

Within 20 minutes, parts of the garden were under 18 inches of water that afternoon, resulting in a loss of about $10,000 in crops.

“It was pretty terrible,” said Lynsey Gammon, the farm director. “It was so fast, too, that you couldn’t prevent it and you couldn’t stop it. By the time that we had walked outside, all of the debris from above us had flown into the farm and got stuck up against our fencing, and it just created this backlog of water all over the farm.”

Her team of three farmers and a few others managed to cut open the fence and let the water drain. Four hours later, the water was gone, but layers of hay, manure and mud caked the garden beds.

Gammon, a career farmer, said she’d never seen anything like it. Neighboring local farmers like Andrea Morgan of Moonshadow Farm didn’t have the same misfortune.

It wasn’t a creek overflow, but a result of runoff from higher elevations. Gammon said with such a hot, dry spring, vegetation that would naturally have established roots in the foothills around Gracie’s Farm had instead died off. All it took was one too many storms, and the soil came sliding off.

“It’s kind of similar to the Dust Bowl if you think about it,” Gammon said. “There was nothing holding down the topsoil, and when a wind event or a rain event comes through, it’s just going to wash right away. So we were unfortunately the victims of that moment.”

Jacee Andersen, a former Gracie’s farm hand who now manages a farm in Midway, said she was crushed when she heard the news.

“It was a gut punch just because I worked here, I know the ladies, I know the farm,” she said. “It’s such a traumatic, hard thing to go through.” 

She brought her two farm hands from Midway for the cleanup last week. 

“It’s honestly good to be back for a little day and kind of learn from what’s happening here, too,” Andersen said. “Seeing similarities in the geographical landscape that could happen to our landscape, and things that we could be aware of, like hedgerows or dry spots upstream, being aware of those, seeing where the lowland is and where we can prepare for something like that at any other farm.”

Gracie’s Farm operates on such a small amount of land, meaning the growing seasons are carefully planned out and rotate through crops, Gammon explained. Rather than planting everything in April to harvest in September, they transplant, seed and harvest almost every week, and bring in about $80,000 each season.

But the timing of the flooding added extra bad luck.

“We were coming into that flow state of August, where most things are in the ground, and we kind of ride out the rest of the season,” Gammon said. “The weekend prior to the flood was our biggest transplant weekend that we’d had since the beginning of the year. So we put in roughly between 2,000 and 3,000 transplants and seeded new crops.”

So not only did they lose a majority of those young, vulnerable plants, but the mature lettuces that were nearly ready to harvest couldn’t be salvaged.

Dominique Tarr, a manager at the farm, said while younger lettuce plants can get fully cleaned, mature lettuce is so tightly leafed that it was impossible to clean out the unsanitary debris caked between the layers. That will all go straight to the compost.

“We don’t want to be the next cyclospora parasite,” she joked.

This week, the farm hosted volunteer times to help with the remediation. In a few hours, a volunteer group was able to clean, weed and till soil in a section of the garden that would have taken the small team two days to do, Tarr said.

Volunteer Amy Sletta is a gardener by hobby who also works banquets at the Blue Sky property. When she heard about the flooding, she put a call out to the Park City Garden Club and signed up to help out herself. 

“Having a small farm like this, they’re struggling, they’re fighting the odds anyway, so they need all the help they can get,” Sletta said. “I just think people need to show up. …Got to keep the small farms going.”

Volunteer Chip Reynolds, a longtime Snyderville Basin resident, strung up peas with Sletta. Reynolds said he’d planned to go to dinner on the farm last Friday when he heard about the flood and figured he should show some support. He’s not a gardener — “I’m a lawn mower,” he joked — but signed up anyway. 

“They need help. It’s as simple as that,” he said.

Others said the fully booked volunteer block, capped at eight slots each day, is a testament to the community, that when Park City calls, people come together.

This group ended their morning with sandwiches donated by Chop Shop Park City, another way the farm has seen love from locals.

“We’ve had more community support and people reaching out than I could have even imagined, and that is what is going to save us,” Gammon said. “The amount of people that are still coming to the farm stand and still coming to the dinners, and still showing up here just to give us a hug or some popsicles or whatever it might be, that’s what’s going to save us.”

The farm’s initial post on its Instagram page got over 100 comments from people encouraging the farmers and offering to help. 

Gammon said it’s too late to fully catch up from the loss, which includes the $10,000 in crops, about $1,500 in top soil, compost and soil amendments that were washed away, as well as the cost of labor and materials.

Before planting any new crops on those beds, they need to ensure the soil isn’t tainted. What they can grow will be sold at the farm store, which sees hundreds of customers, distributed to their 31 community-supported agriculture members and served to farm dinner attendees and at The Lodge at Blue Sky restaurants. But it’ll be limited.

“(This) could financially ruin another farm easily, and if this were my personal farm, I would have a lot to think about as far as how to move forward,” Gammon said. “I’m hopeful. I mean it’s a huge loss, and it doesn’t go unnoticed by any means. It’s still a big financial loss, but we’re going to try our best to make it up in other ways if we can.”

Gracie’s Farm will host volunteer days on Wednesdays and Saturdays until the farm is back on track, and Gammon said all are welcome. For anyone who can’t commit the time or manual labor, there are other ways to support, Gammon said. Visit the farm stand, grab a meal at the Smokewood trailer, which operates Fridays and Saturdays, or purchase a ticket for a farm dinner. 

“Farming in general is filled with challenges. Like every single year, there’s something that comes up. It’s always kind of an adversity challenge, but this year has felt particularly bitter,” she said. “It’s a sad moment.”

The post Community helps Gracie’s Farm recover from devastating monsoon flood appeared first on Park Record.

When Goose Juhl founded All Seasons Adventures in 2001, Park City’s summer identity was still taking shape.

Juhl, who had moved to Park City in 1977 and for years worked as a guide and in fly and ski shops, saw an opportunity to create a one-stop outfitter for visitors looking to hike, mountain bike, raft or fly fish.

Visitors then didn’t really know what else the area had to offer outside of skiing, he said.

“People started coming to town in the summer. Maybe they had bought a condo here or whatever, or just skied here in the winter and decided to see what summer was all about, but didn’t really have any guidance as far as what to do in the summer,” Juhl said.

So All Seasons began, providing guides who would pick guests up where they were staying, provide the equipment and transportation, lead them through an activity and bring them back afterward. The target was primarily families staying at Park City’s higher-end hotels. 

That approach was convenient for visitors, but it also gave the company a foothold with the hotel concierges who helped guests decide how to spend their time.

It truly was humble beginnings, Juhl said. They began operating out of a linen closet at the Grand Summit hotel, sharing a desk in the lobby with employees who arranged BMW test drives for guests.

The timing of the company’s launch, in hindsight, wasn’t great either, Juhl said. All Seasons opened in 2001, just before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks disrupted travel. The following year, the 2002 Winter Olympics brought thousands of people to Park City, but for a different reason.

Still, the company survived. Then it survived the financial crisis of 2008, and more recently the COVID pandemic. It also lasted through an ownership change — Juhl began transferring the business to now co-owners Spencer Byrne and Justin Brown in 2014. 

So what’s kept it going for a quarter of a century? Its fundamental values haven’t changed.

“It’s always come down to customer service for us. Our reputation is built around reliability and showing up and doing a great job,” said Byrne. “We wanted everyone’s trip to be a success and to have fun and to have enjoyed Park City and all it has to offer. And that’s definitely something that we continue to strive for and deliver.”

Byrne joined All Seasons after moving to Park City in 2005 following stints working in the outdoor industry in Antarctica and as a raft guide in West Virginia. He began guiding for All Seasons in 2006, and remembers those linen closet days at the Grand Summit Hotel.

Brown started a few years later, in 2008, also as a guide.

By 2014, the two were preparing to become the company’s next owners. They began purchasing the business from Juhl, who gradually stepped away over the next several years.

Juhl, who hired both guys, said it became clear that they had the initiative to take on more work, and when they eventually approached him about buying the business, he knew it would be a great fit. 

“It wouldn’t have been an easy business to sell just to somebody walking the street,” he said. “They knew exactly where we were going to go hiking, how to work with the clients and the hotels, just all the aspects of the business.” 

Juhl first made the two partners and then phased himself out over five years. 

“It couldn’t have worked out better for me because All Seasons Adventures was like my baby, and I was putting it up for adoption. Those guys, they’ve been really great with it,” Juhl said. “We’re all still really good friends.”

Not much changed in Byrne and Brown’s hands aside from a few location changes. As for becoming business owners instead of just guides, the two said that came with plenty of challenges. 

“I think we both probably wish we had much broader business education,” Brown said with a laugh. “The main thing that guiding teaches you is nothing ever goes exactly to plan.” 

A client may be unable to complete a planned hike. Weather can change. Guests can arrive late or have different expectations than anticipated. A guide has to be flexible, and so does a business owner, Brown said.

“You have to be a little bit plastic in all your decisions,” Brown said. “You don’t get to just give up and say, ‘Well, this didn’t work out.’ You have to make the best of it and persevere.”

That flexibility is crucial as Park City’s tourism and weather patterns shift.

Take this year, for example. It’s the first time the two have ever had a year with both no snow and heavy monsoons, which has limited their time out on trails. 

There have been other changes, too. While staffing hasn’t ever been difficult, Byrne said when he started, most of All Seasons’ guides lived in Park City or elsewhere on the Wasatch Back. Today, maybe 10% of the company’s guides live in the area, and most commute from the Salt Lake Valley.

At the same time, the company has watched summer tourism grow into a much larger part of Park City’s economy, and more specifically the rise of corporate groups.

Brown said it used to be that corporate groups came in the shoulder seasons, when hotels offered lower rates and conference space was more accessible. Now, it’s basically year round, which is great for business, especially in a year like this one, when leisure travel seems down.

What makes All Seasons attractive for corporate groups is its ability to custom design a program, Brown said. One of their most popular activities — a catapult competition — was born from a custom itinerary that they eventually perfected.

All Seasons still offers many of the activities Juhl envisioned when he started the company, including hiking, rafting, mountain biking and fly fishing. Winter offerings include snowshoeing, cross-country skiing, dog sledding and trap shooting.

Snowshoeing has become one of the company’s most popular repeat activities, and the company has developed variations of the activity, including snowshoeing with s’mores and even a children’s treasure hunt, Byrne said.

Just like when they started, All Seasons is more family oriented compared to some of the more “adrenaline-junkie” counterparts, Juhl said. They found their niche in meeting people where they’re at.

Park City’s extensive trail network, spanning 450 miles, can be overwhelming for visitors, said Byrne. A guide can select a route that matches a guest’s abilities, help with equipment and logistics and provide assistance if something goes wrong, Byrne said.

For mountain bikers, that might mean changing a flat tire or helping with a mechanical issue. On the Weber River, with class 2 rapids, it can mean recognizing when conditions or a guest’s abilities make an activity unsafe.

Even experienced fly fishermen benefit from local knowledge, Byrne said. Guides know what is biting, where to go and which fly to use, so visitors who travel from across the country to fish Park City’s blue-ribbon waters can have a successful day.

All of those positive experiences get people to buy in on the value of the outdoors, Brown said. It’s why they love taking out families.

“We see more fulfillment of getting families out, getting those little kids rafting, because we need to take care of the outdoor world and the environment,” he said. “The only way people really will do that is if they enjoy it and they want to be out there. I think that starts out young. It did for both of us, and I think that you need to have that instilled in you, so you do take care of it.”

Byrne grew up visiting national parks and remembers the impact those experiences had on him, like being in Yellowstone National Park when the wolves were reintroduced to the land. Now he sees guiding as a way to introduce thousands of people to the outdoors each year and perhaps influence how they think about protecting those places.

“It’s just important not to forget what makes this community so great, and it’s the access to the outdoors. I ended up here for a reason,” said Byrne. “The amount of adventure we have out our back door was hard to replicate anywhere else.”

And Juhl, though he’s retired from the business now, has seen that same legacy.

“I feel really good that All Seasons Adventures has gotten a lot of people out into nature that probably wouldn’t have been comfortable doing it on their own,” he said.

The post Guiding company hits 25 years delivering All Seasons Adventures in the Wasatch Back appeared first on Park Record.

Two local businesses in Francis have reopened exactly one year after a fire burned a building on Spring Hollow Road to the ground.

“We’ve been so busy, so it hasn’t really hit, but it is a weird, surreal feeling that we’re finally open,” said Sydney Thompson. “We decided a month ago that we were just going to get it done. We were like, ‘How cool would it be to reopen on the anniversary of the fire?’ So it’s been a marathon.”

Thompson and her stepmother, Raychel Hatch, run the Farmhouse at Spring Hollow, a small boutique selling home decor, jewelry, gifts and food. Thompson is also a florist and works out of the space to create arrangements, often using flowers Hatch grows in the garden.

“I’ve been working out of my home, and we have a cold food storage area behind our house in a little shed that we converted into a flower cooler,” Thompson said. “It’s a small house, so it’s been a little hectic, but it’ll be good to get back in the swing of things.”

The structure was rebuilt by the end of February, but it took the family a few months to coordinate with Rocky Mountain Power to restore utilities on the property. But the family hit the ground running to finish construction and renovations as soon as they had power again, and their efforts culminated in a grand reopening ceremony over the weekend.

Hatch estimated the reopening, from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Friday and Saturday, drew “hundreds of people” based on the number of free ice cream cones the family gave away as part of the event.

“My favorite part is connecting with the community,” Hatch said. “I love all the different people who come in, and I meet so many people, so that’s what I’ve been looking forward to as we reopen. It’s been good so far.”

The boutique isn’t the only business at the Spring Hollow Road address, though.

Dustin Hatch, Thompson’s dad and Raychel’s husband, owns and operates Frontier Woodworks in a separate part of the building behind his daughter’s store. The company has been a staple in the Francis community since 1995, with Dustin specializing in handcrafted doors and millwork.

The family also isn’t quite done with the project, even with the boutique’s opening last week. Thompson is working on building a floral studio next door to the store, which she estimated would take three to four more months to complete.

“I like being a florist because it’s easygoing,” Thompson said. “I get to make beautiful things, and I’m definitely more on the creative side, so it’s fun for me to express myself through flowers.”

The structure housing Frontier Woodworks and the Farmhouse at Spring Hollow burned down last July, with Dustin estimating a $2 million loss between the damaged building and woodworking equipment.

It wasn’t the first time the building had been destroyed in a fire, either. Dustin previously said the situation felt familiar because of a similar incident in 2005, although his woodworking company was much smaller at the time.

“I was deeply in debt,” he said. “It literally has taken me probably 18 years to recover from that, between being in debt for all the equipment that I had purchased, since it was still fairly new and only 4 to 5 years old and annihilated in the fire, and then having to get more equipment on top of that. It was just a huge amount of stress, but we made it through.”

The fire last summer wasn’t quite as difficult financially for Dustin, who had already paid off most of his equipment-related debt. He said he was grateful for that scenario because it’s almost impossible for insurance companies to fully cover woodworking shops, which are considered too high risk.

For example, Dustin said he tried to run a fire suppression line into the main shop to hook up sprinklers in case of a fire, but his insurance company told him they wouldn’t cover any damages if he were to do so.

“The guy said, ‘Well, if one machine goes bad and sets off the sprinkler systems, it’s now ruined $1 million worth of equipment, and we don’t want to take that risk,’” Dustin said. “So then it’s like, OK, what do you do? What’s the answer?”

The local Summit County community, especially in Francis, was an enormous help to the family after the fire. They cleared the debris themselves with help from friends and residents who had heard about the damage. An online fundraiser raised $48,670 for the family, and Summit County Fair attendees last summer passed around a hat to collect cash donations at the rodeo.

“Through all the bad, there’s a lot of good,” Dustin said. “My faith in humanity has grown exponentially with just the goodness of people in the community, outside the community, people that don’t even like me who are like, ‘Come here and give me a hug.’ … It really has renewed my faith in the goodness of people in a time where all you hear is bad about a lot of stuff, which just goes to show you can disagree on things and still care for one another.”

Information on Frontier Woodworks is available by visiting frontierwoodworks.org.

The Farmhouse at Spring Hollow is open 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Friday and 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Saturday. The address is 2284 S. Spring Hollow Road in Francis.

The post Francis businesses reopen exactly one year after devastating fire appeared first on Park Record.

Reef Capital Partners is expanding its partnership with hospitality management company CoralTree Hospitality, bringing the Denver-based operator to two Park City properties for what both call a long-term investment in the community.

CoralTree will oversee operations at Main & Sky on Main Street and Pioche Village at Deer Valley Resort’s East Village as part of a broader agreement that includes properties in Colorado and Virginia. The expansion grows CoralTree’s relationship with Reef from one property — Black Desert Resort in southern Utah — to five nationwide.

The partnership marks CoralTree’s return to Park City after previously managing Newpark Resort before departing in 2019.

“We as a company are kind of born and raised in the mountains, so we definitely have a crazy affinity for the mountains,” said CoralTree Senior Vice President Mike Cuthbertson, explaining that the company began in downtown Aspen, Colorado, in 1973. “Getting into Park City for us is just an absolute joy.”

He said the company has been looking for an opportunity to return to the area ever since leaving Newpark.

But it’s unlikely that Parkites have heard of the brand, he said. That’s because unlike major hotel brands, CoralTree largely operates behind the scenes, managing resorts while allowing each property to maintain its own identity.

“You probably don’t know our name, and you probably haven’t seen our name, and that’s very purposeful,” Cuthbertson said. “We’re a silent brand.”

Rather than imposing a standard operating model across its portfolio, he said CoralTree focuses on developing each property’s unique identity.

“We don’t have a perfect playbook that we say, ‘This is what we do in every location,’” he said. “We really go into each location, and we want to bring it to life to the best of its brand-of-one philosophy.”

This approach aligns with Reef’s vision for its growing hospitality portfolio.

Reef Chief Hospitality Officer Harry Hirsch said the relationship developed after the companies worked together at Black Desert Resort. Although Reef had planned to bring more hospitality operations in house, CoralTree’s performance convinced company leaders to expand the partnership instead.

“We weren’t just looking for a hotel management company,” Hirsch said. “We really wanted a team that could share our values. … They’re genuinely a people-first organization, and they’re just a good group of people.”

The partnership extends beyond traditional hotel operations. CoralTree also specializes in the management of homeowners associations, private residence clubs and vacation rental programs, a capability that both companies said is valuable for Park City’s condominium-based lodging market.

Cuthbertson said the company’s experience managing individually owned residences made it well suited for Main & Sky and Pioche Village, where ownership structures differ but require balancing guest experiences with homeowner expectations.

“Homeowners have different expectations, pride of ownership. … We have to maintain and establish a relationship so that they feel trust, they feel cared for,” he said. “We want to make sure that those homeowners come on vacation and actually are on vacation and don’t feel like a landlord and have to come and fix the sink or do anything like that.”

Pioche Village, in Deer Valley East Village, is one of Reef’s newest developments. The community includes more than 400 residences, with about 90 currently participating in CoralTree’s short-term rental program alongside long-term residents.

Cuthbertson said CoralTree hopes to grow that rental program while maintaining the property’s residential character. He envisions programming that encourages residents and visitors to interact, whether through food trucks, community events or shared gathering spaces.

“We want it to feel like a place where locals overlap with guests, and you’re all kind of in the same ecosystem,” he said.

Reef has been involved with Main & Sky for nearly seven years, Hirsch said, but big change is coming. This fall the hotel will announce a complete rebrand.

The luxury condominium hotel on Historic Main Street has undergone extensive interior renovations, including redesigned residences, new furnishings, artwork and rebuilt restaurant, bar and spa spaces, Hirsch said. Guest rooms, the lobby and common areas have already reopened, he said, so it’s currently in a preview period. The amenities will reopen with the rebrand announcement.

Cuthbertson said the location of the property distinguishes it from other luxury accommodations in Park City.

“The luxury level that Main & Sky will operate in will compete against the best of the best luxury hotels in the Park City area,” he said. “But there’s really not that type of hotel that’s right on Main Street.”

With only 33 units, he said the property has a more intimate feel.

“It’s the kind of place where everybody knows your name when you walk in the door,” Cuthbertson said.

For both companies, the partnership is a way to further invest in the local community. 

Hirsch said Reef, founded by entrepreneurs from Vernal, has built its business through relationships and wants each property to reflect the character of its surrounding community.

He added that Reef plans for both Park City properties to become increasingly involved with local nonprofit organizations, including the Children’s Justice Center, Peace House, Habitat for Humanity, Nuzzles & Co., Wasatch Community Foundation and the People’s Health Clinic.

“Reef is big in service for its community,” Hirsch said. “You’re going to start to see both of these properties showing up in a lot of those areas.”

Cuthbertson said both companies share a long-term view of Park City’s future, seeing it as a destination that has proven its staying power across generations.

“We pick places like Park City because they’ve been tried and true for many, many years, and we expect them to be tried and true vacation destinations for many, many more years,” he said. “We take a very long-term view of our business, and that fits really well with Reef. They want to be a part of the community fabric. We want to do the same. We’re in it for the long haul to do the right thing for the Park City community.”

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