As Sotirios Gatsiopoulos looks out over his mostly empty bar, he calls to the one man occupying a stool just next to the entrance.
“Hey Slim!” The Key Largo Lounge owner said. “How long have you been coming to this bar?”
“Four or five years,” Slim calls back.
“How long have you been washing windows for us?” Gatsiopoulos follows.
“About two years,” Slim answers.
It’s that “once you’re here, you’re one of us” mentality that has Gatsiopoulos ready to celebrate 20 years in business on Saturday.
Because “Slim” isn’t alone. Nearly everyone who walks through Key Largo’s doors enough times becomes part of the family. And like family, they just might put you to work.
But anyone who has cleaned a window or fixed a leaky pipe over the past two decades would say they were happy to help out the family.
“After 20 years, I can’t emphasize enough how important it is for your customers to become your friends and your friends to be your family,” Gatsiopoulos said. “I didn’t know 99% of them before they came in. And now 100% of them are family.”
Key Largo owner, Sotirios Gatsiopoulos, laughs with a customer as he works the bar at Key Largo Lounge in Greeley on Wednesday, May 13, 2026. (Brice Tucker/Staff Photographer)
Gatsiopoulos said the lounge inhabits a historic space at 3621 10th St., Unit 1. He bought and opened Key Large Lounge in 2006, after the Red Garter Lounge closed its doors for good. The Red Garter Lounge was Greeley’s first bar to secure a liquor license back in 1970, just one year after the city council voted to allow liquor sales for the first time in the city’s history.
Still a few months shy of his 22nd birthday, Gatsiopoulos was working a few blocks down at the Paragon Restaurant when he bought the lounge.
“We have been very fortunate to be here for as long as we have,” he said. “I didn’t think it was going to last a month, let alone a year, let alone 20. It’s been a wonderful journey.”
So what has been the secret to running a successful bar for so long?
Well, one of the first lessons most bar owners likely figure out, Gatsiopoulos said he had to learn the hard way: “Don’t get high on your own supply.”
Getting sober a few years into operating Key Largo made learning the following lessons every young business owner faces much easier, including figuring out what he believes really drives the bar’s success.
“It’s consistency,” he said. “We’re a neighborhood bar. We’re not reinventing the wheel here. What we are here to do is share the experience and the space with our friends. And that’s really it.”
Key Largo regular, Kevin Edwards, left and bar owner, Sotirios Gatsiopoulos, right, both talk about their shared interest in music while Gatsiopoulos tends the bar at Key Largo Lounge in Greeley on Wednesday, May 13, 2026. (Brice Tucker/Staff Photographer)
That experience is something Gatsiopoulos has worked hard to curate. Key Largo has tried hard — through great, loyal staff and that family mentality — to create a stress-free world inside the bar’s four walls.
“One of the things I miss is just getting together with your friends at a buddy’s house to eat pizza, drink soda and play video games or watch something on TV,” he said. “That community. That togetherness. That’s kind of what we try to do here.”
Key Largo regular, Kevin Edwards, left and bar owner, Sotirios Gatsiopoulos, right, hug each other before Gatsiopoulos leaves the bar at the end of his shift at Key Largo Lounge in Greeley on Wednesday, May 13, 2026. (Brice Tucker/Staff Photographer)
But Gatsiopoulos understands that the environment comes from the people who occupy it. From the bartenders — of whom a couple have been around nearly as long as Gatsiopoulos — to the regulars who can be found at the bar during many happy hours, to those who are just passing through, Gatsiopoulos said he owes it all to the people.
“I’m so blessed, so blessed,” he said. “I can’t thank everybody enough. The customers, my employees. Since Day 1, over 20 years. Thank you.”