Denver’s bRUNch Running Founder on Pivoting a Running Events Business in 2025

Going to Denver-area run clubs, Alex Weissner and her friends stumbled upon a great life hack. In their 20s and without much disposable income, they found that run clubs provided a perfect opportunity to get active, meet new people, and enjoy discounted food and drinks.

They were having fun, but realized local run clubs weren’t always welcoming of “slower” paces, especially since so many fast runners trained in the Denver area. It was common to get dropped within the first mile.

“This was almost 15 years ago, [and] the running industry was not as inclusive,” Alex notes. “Run clubs have boomed so much since then.”

Alex and her friends decided to combine their love of food with their desire to create a more welcoming space for runners. They started a Sunday run and brunch club called bRUNch Running and met up at local restaurants.

Over the years, the bRUNch Running community has grown, and so has the business with the additions of large-scale annual events, a podcast, and merchandise.

A Decade of Brunch Runs and Counting

While Alex now lives in Steamboat Springs, where she’s the event producer for the Steamboat Marathon and membership manager for the Steamboat Springs Chamber, she continues to collaborate with a strong bRUNch Running leadership team to maintain an active events calendar in Denver.

Caitlin develops partnerships with Denver-area restaurants and coordinates all of Denver’s Sunday run clubs, and Ashley and Lindsley help lead the runs. Chelsea joined around 2019 and manages the group’s social media account. And Andy has been with the group since its early days, often marking the routes with chalk to get in some extra miles before the Sunday runs begin.

“Our Denver crew is hardcore. They show up. They are excited about being there, and they’re all wonderful human beings,” Alex shares. “We all show up because of each other in the community and the friendships we’ve made.”

Shifting Away From Big Events in 2025

In addition to Denver, bRUNch Running once had chapters in Phoenix and Austin, and the group still occasionally hosts pop-ups in those cities. New this summer are pop-up runs in Steamboat Springs and Colorado Springs.

Annual events include the Brunch At Night 5K + 10K, which raises funds for Girls on the Run of the Rockies. The bRUNch Run — a 5K, 10K, and 15K in Denver’s Central Park — culminated with brunch bites from local restaurants at the finish line and donated a portion of the proceeds to Metro Caring.

Recently, bRUNch Running announced the cancellation of this year’s The bRUNch Run due to the current tariffs and economic conditions affecting event production costs and sponsorship commitments. While The bRUNch Run was the company’s biggest revenue generator, Alex shared in the announcement that, “after reviewing the numbers, we simply couldn’t make the math math.”

It’s a challenge many other race companies are facing.

Alex says she’s assessing how to pivot from large-scale events and developing new strategies for bRUNch Running, including creative ways to continue building community. She shares more on the challenges, her visions for the future, and bRUNch Running’s founding story below.

What inspired the idea to start bRUNch Running?

Alex Weissner: It really started out as something me and a bunch of girlfriends were doing on Sunday mornings. We were in our mid- to late-20s. It was like Denver 2010, and there were a bunch of run clubs from bars and restaurants. Being in our late 20s, we didn’t have a lot of money, and we were looking for social things to do, but also ways to be healthy…and where there were free drinks or free food.

Wahoo’s, at the time, had a Tuesday night run club, and we lived right down the street. Our friend group would go do the run and have tacos. On Thursday nights, we would go and do the Irish Snug run, and they had pasta afterwards. We just started cherry-picking these runs around town to get our runs in with great happy hour and food deals afterwards. It was also a great way to meet people.

Because we were all living in the same apartment complex, we’d literally pick restaurants we wanted to try and run there on Sunday mornings, and then take the bike rentals home or have someone’s husband pick us up.

At that same time, I was really starting to get more into PR, and marketing festivals with restaurants, and learning more about a lot of my restaurant clients that were serving brunch …. That first hour they were open was always quiet. I was like, ‘I think I can solve part of your problem.’

That was really where the run club started. Asking these restaurants, ‘Can we come in? We’ll bring in all the runners. We’re going to buy brunch here afterwards.’ So we were literally just filling their seats, and they loved it.

How has the bRUNch Run Club evolved over the years?

Alex Weissner: When we first launched bRUNch Running, every single run was ticketed. You had to purchase a ticket to reserve your spot. That ticket also included your drinks and your food.

That model worked really, really well for years. It did start to limit us as we grew …. What we found through feedback from people was that sometimes they want to come and run with us and only have a coffee. So…how do we make this so that people can literally just come and buy their own brunch?

Now, run club is always free …. It’s not a ticketed thing. It makes it way more inclusive.

It’s about communities, about the experience. We want you to come out, and if you want to stay for brunch, yes! We might say, ‘stay for brunch,’ because that’s where a lot of those great conversations happen, and where you really get to meet people.

The bRUNch Run was your biggest annual event until its recent cancellation. How did that event come together, and how is the current economic climate impacting races?

Alex Weissner: We started The bRUNch Run in 2014, and that was our second full year [of the run club] in Denver …. One of the things I kept [thinking] was, there’s got to be a better experience post-race that we can do.

Being able to bring the restaurants out to the finish line was our goal. When you cross the finish line, we want there to be a brunch-themed festival with mimosas, with coffee, with all these great brunch restaurants serving up small bites — really taking that food festival approach.

I volunteered at so many races…to learn how people put together [a race]. I knew how to put a festival together. The race side, not so much …. I literally spent all winter that year working with another event company in town that put on races to learn how to do stuff, learn the permitting process of working with the City of Denver.

Back then, you had to physically show up for two years on November 1 at the county building to reserve your park until you were grandfathered in. I’d literally be out there on Halloween night with a sleeping bag.

The bRUNch Run is our largest revenue stream from a business standpoint. All three of our paid events help, but The bRUNch Run [was what kept] the lights on.

These tariffs will put small businesses out of business. Our profit margins are already small, and as the manufacturing that we need does not exist in the U.S., many of us will not be able to do what we do. Sponsors, the big brands, need to support smaller events if they want events to continue.

Given the economic challenges, what do you see for the future of bRUNch Running?

Alex Weissner: This year is a big pivot year, just with everything going on.

It’s almost like 2020, all over again. What are we going to implement from a community standpoint? And how do you create community when events might not always be able to be the vessel to create that community? Our podcast just relaunched. What can we bring there, so those conversations we are having on Sundays at brunch can go deeper?

Where I’m leaning towards now is, how can we build this community to be a national community? Where, yes, we have the clubs, but people are meeting up and doing brunch runs on their own on the weekends with their friends.

Then we can come together at some of these bigger events…like the Chicago Marathon. A lot of us are going to Scottsdale for the Every Woman’s Marathon in November. We are working on doing a shakeout run for that. Because if our community is going to be there, let’s throw a party and get together so we can do this, run together, and then go about our weekend.

What can we really do to make sure that this continues as a viable business? That’s my big goal right now. I am working on new ideas for us, and I am excited to share them with our community.

Follow bRUNch Running on Instagram.

“It’s about communities, about the experience. We want you to come out, and if you want to stay for brunch, yes! We might say, ‘stay for brunch,’ because that’s where a lot of those great conversations happen, and where you really get to meet people.” – Alex Weissner