Revolutionizing · Modernizing · Simplifying
Revolutionizing · Modernizing · Simplifying
Four years ago, Hello Darling was the little coffee-and-cocktail spot in LoHi that everybody in Denver wanted a photo in. Now it is a lawsuit. And honestly, it is one of the messier hospitality blowups we have watched hit this city in a while.
Here is the short version. Daniel Masters, the founder and the public face of Hello Darling and Flora Cafe, says he has been forced out of the businesses he built. He is pointing the finger at Naseem Hakim, the majority owner, and he is not being quiet about it. Masters alleges Hakim stole company cash and threatened to close the cafes outright. On Oct. 23, 2026, he filed suit to claw back some control.
So let me back up, because the timeline is the whole story.
Masters opened the first Hello Darling in LoHi back in 2022. That is the one that put the name on the map. Then in 2024 he went into business with Naseem Hakim, and the two of them set up a holding company called Darling Flora Holdings to run the whole thing.
And they moved fast. In 2024, Darling Flora Holdings opened a second Hello Darling over in West Highland at 3484 W. 32nd Ave., plus Flora in the Golden Triangle. Then in 2026 they added Pipsqueak, a little coffee kiosk near Union Station. One of the original Hello Darling spots sits right on Commons Park at 1610 Little Raven St., so if you have grabbed a latte down there, you have been inside this fight without knowing it.
Flora is the one that reads like the showpiece. It is at 370 W. 12th Ave., basically a stone's throw from the Denver Art Museum. We are talking 1,907 square feet built out for 62 patrons, with somewhere around
Here is the part people miss. On paper, this was never an even partnership. Hakim owns 80% of Darling Flora Holdings. Masters owns 20%. So the guy whose name and face are all over the brand is the minority owner. And when the money man and the founder stop agreeing, the math on that split starts to matter a lot.
Masters says the break started early. In his telling, "In late 2024, Hakim initiated a takeover." So this has been simmering for a long time behind those pretty storefronts.
Then it went public. About two months before Masters filed, the company backing the cafes came out swinging at him first. They accused Masters of stealing six figures and wasting money on that West Highland buildout. They used the words fraud and embezzlement. Not softening it at all.
That is where the
Masters fired back and called the claims "reckless and false." He says he has the records to prove it. So you have got dueling accusations of theft, a founder who says he got pushed out of his own creation, and a majority owner who says the founder is the thief. There is no clean guy in the room right now, at least not on paper.
The dispute got laid out by Justin Wingerter at BusinessDen on Nov. 2, 2026. Worth your attention because these fights usually stay quiet until one side wants leverage, and this one is very much out in the open.
Here is some context most people around here do not have. Before Denver, Masters was running nightlife in Memphis. He had the Silly Goose nightclub and the Pontotoc Lounge, which was an eatery. So he did not stumble into the coffee-cocktail thing. He has been building rooms people want to be in for years.
And he is already building the next one. Masters is opening a cocktail lounge and cafe called Amoret this fall, in the Steel House building in RiNo. So while the Hello Darling fight plays out in court, his attention is clearly moving a few blocks over.
Look, the human drama is fun. Two partners who turned on each other, six-figure accusations flying both ways, a founder possibly locked out of the brand he started. But there is a real lesson in here, and it touches anybody thinking about going into business on real estate in this city.
Hospitality in Denver runs on leases, buildouts, and who controls the entity that signs the paper. Masters put his name on the door. Hakim put up the majority stake. And when the trust broke, the name on the door did not win the argument. The ownership percentage did, or at least it is trying to.
That is the same story that plays out in commercial deals all over the Front Range. The person everybody associates with a place is not always the person who controls it. So whether you are signing a lease on a cafe or buying into a building with a partner, the cap table is the thing that bites you later, not the vibe.
For now, three of Denver's buzziest little rooms are stuck in the middle of it. We will be watching how it lands.