Revolutionizing · Modernizing · Simplifying
Revolutionizing · Modernizing · Simplifying
$300. No English. Córdoba, Argentina in the rearview, Denver straight ahead. That was Lorena Cantarovici in 2000, and if you had told her then that she would one day plant a flag inside the Great Hall at Denver Union Station, she probably would not have had the words to answer you.
But that is exactly what happened on October 16, 2026. Maria Empanada opened its sixth location, and it did not pick some strip mall off the highway. It picked the single most iconic transit hub in the state.
Most people walk past the Maria Empanada counter and see a food brand. What they do not realize is how far back the roots go and how improbable the whole thing is.
Cantarovici came to Denver with $300 and not one word of English. Back home she was no slouch, by the way. She was the youngest branch manager at Banco de Galicia in Buenos Aires and she earned a master's degree in marketing. So this was not someone starting from zero on talent. This was someone starting from zero on circumstance, which is a very different thing.
The business itself began in 2011, baked out of her garage. That is the origin story people love and it is true. Garage. $300. A recipe and a last name to live up to.
And here is the detail that gets me every time. The brand is named after her mother, Maria, who struggled to stay employed back in Argentina. So every box of empanadas that moves through Union Station carries the name of a woman who could not catch a break in her own country. Lorena carried it for her. If you ask me, that is the whole thing right there.
The turning point came in 2014, when she landed her first commercial business loan from the Colorado Enterprise Fund. That money moved her into a real storefront at 1298 South Broadway. If you have spent any time on South Broadway, you know that stretch, and that original shop is where the legend got loud.
At its peak, that kitchen was cranking out up to 1,500 empanadas a day. A day. From a woman who showed up with $300.
Then 2017 happened and it was a big year. The Colorado Impact Fund put in $3.5 million in Series A funding, and Cantarovici was named Colorado's Small Business Person of the Year. That is not a participation trophy. That is the state pointing at someone and saying, look at what this person built.
Here is the thing about the Union Station spot. It is not just a good retail location. It is personal.
Cantarovici has said the station holds a connection to her from a visit with her father. So of all the places to land location number six, she chose the one tied to family. That tracks with everything else about this brand. It has always been about family. The mother it is named for. The grandmother whose bread recipe inspired the new Sandwiches de Campo program she rolled out in 2026, built on housemade bread. The father who walked through that Great Hall with her.
The new counter is open daily, 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. You can grab empanadas individually, buy them by the box, or order online ahead of time, which is dangerous for me because I will absolutely talk myself into a box of a dozen on the way to the platform. More than a dozen varieties, plus sweets and coffee. So it works for the 7 a.m. commuter and the 2 p.m. tourist equally.
The spot replaced the old Baumé dessert kiosk, and it joins the recent wave of station additions like Camino by Ultreia and OGO Kitchen. Union Station has been busy. It recently wrapped renovations on the Great Hall, the Cooper Lounge, and all 112 guest rooms at the Crawford Hotel.
Worth knowing who you are standing in when you bite into one of these. Union Station is run by the Union Station Alliance, a consortium that includes City Street Investors and Sage Hospitality Group. That group led the $54 million historic renovation back in 2014, the one that turned the building from a pretty train station into the social living room of downtown Denver.
And that is the quiet real estate lesson here. The 2014 renovation did not just fix up a building. It created the kind of foot traffic and prestige that makes a brand like Maria Empanada want to pay for a spot in the Great Hall more than a decade later. Good public space pulls good businesses. Good businesses pull people. People lift the neighborhood. It compounds, and Union Station is the clearest example of it in the city.
So next time you are cutting through the Great Hall, look for the counter that started in a garage with $300 and a mother's name. Order the box. Hayley and I will fight you for the last one.