SPONSOR - WALTER DAVIS (GOLD STAR HOTLINKS

Colorado’s Favorite Hotllink!

Address: 2878 Colorado Blvd. Denver, Co 80207 Store Hours: Monday-Saturday 10:00am - 5:00pm Phone: 720:361-2761 Website: www.goldstarhotlinks.com

Walter Davis

An Owner of Goldstar Hotlinks

Owner Of GoldStar Hotlinks

I handle the day-to-day operations. We have a retail store, and I do everything from ordering products, waiting on customers, and picking up products.

Why do you do what you do?

My wife Melanie and I have always been in the food industry. When we lived in Los Angeles, my wife and I owned a cookie business. So we got a taste of food entrepreneurship there, and once we left there, I went to work for Bimbo Bakeries. I realized that I wasn’t quite ready for full-on entrepreneurship and financial situations. I did know that I wanted to go into business for myself. So I tried a few things. We did some real estate, investing, and flipping houses, which I enjoyed, and we had an opportunity to revive the Goldstar brand later in life.

Did you channel all the things that you learned to launch Goldstar?

Little did I know that all the knowledge that I was being taught as a worker, supervisor, up to a manager at Bimbo, would help me develop the skills I needed to launch Goldstar. I spent the last 15 years in transportation logistics. I was around salespeople, drivers, managers, and CEOs. God worked all that out without me even knowing.

Is it a family business?

We own it with another couple, Kwame and Kalai Warner, and they used to own Good Eat Meat and had a meat market in Aurora. We are good friends with them.

They have a background in marketing and financing, and the meat industry. My wife and I bring entrepreneurship and ownership in the food industry and experience in transportation and logistics.

What do people love about your business?

My wife is a big hotlink fan. People are just amazed at how good it tastes. It’s a wonderful flavor. It’s one thing you don’t find in a hotlink; once you bite into it, you have the flavor, and the heat proportion is just blended so evenly it’s just amazing how you can get that great taste out of a hotlink. People love the flavor of these hotlinks, which makes us stand apart from the others.

Do you make the hotlinks?

They are made from a few meat manufacturers. Two are local in Colorado, and one is out of state.

What is the biggest lesson you are currently learning since launching this new business?

I know about managing the risk of owning your own business, calculating the cost of mistakes and successes. When it’s your business and your income is based on what you produce, sell, and how well your product is, it’s a little bit scary in the beginning. Fortunately, we have successfully done some other things that have given us a little bit of a financial head start, and so we have a little bit of something to fall back on. But it’s still a little scary to solely rely on your abilities and your product to run a business.

What is your business philosophy, especially in a way when things get tough?

We struggled for about a year to get that quality hotlink just like it was. This hotlink has been around since the 1930s here in Colorado, and we had to resurrect it with only the recipe. So we had about a year working on that hotlink to get the original taste and, with the grace of God, blessing us with finances and business sense and the customers coming in from the neighborhood to support. We believe in a business that is supported by the community to support the community. That’s why we started Be the Good Campaign. We want to do our part in supporting the local heroes who are positively impacting the lives of children and adults and our neighborhoods. So each week, we select one nonprofit or community then contribute 10% of our gross sales to that organization. of our gross sales to that organization.

What is your signature product?

Our signature product is our Goldstar 2 to 1 Hotlink: a pork and beef hotlink with the Goldstar recipe. But we’ve produced an allbeef hotlink with that same recipe which has no pork, even the casing is beef, which is for our non-pork eating customers. We have a long and short version of that hotlink. We have a bratwurst with bacon and Hatch Chili that’s got a nice little heat proportion to it. We also have just plain Polish sausage for individuals that don’t like the spices. We are coming up with a spicy Italian soon, which will be very good. One other item that we’re looking into is a no meat hotlink. There’s a big market for non-meat products now.