Fenceline Cider in Mancos will reopen Friday, Jan. 10 at 11:30 a.m. after being closed for 10 days with a new addition out front: A wood-fired pizza food truck called Sweetwater Gypsies.
“We’ll miss the Fencepost, but we’re really excited about Sweetwater Gypsies,” said Jordan Lang, Fenceline’s manager since 2021.
On Facebook, the cidery announced, “with mixed emotions,” that it would be closing the Fencepost on Dec. 30.
“We can’t thank you enough for your support over the years,” it said in the Dec. 23 post online.
Still, “the goal was never to run a restaurant,” Lang said.
“We ended up doing it and we enjoyed it,” said Lang. “But we wanted to take a step back from running a restaurant, since our main goal is to make cider.”
So they decided to do just that, and leave the food part up to someone else. That “someone else” has long been food trucks.
A few years ago, food trucks in the area were in substantial supply. So substantial, in fact, that Fenceline was able to bring in a different one for its patrons to enjoy each night of the week, Lang said.
But that supply dwindled.
Some trucks got their own brick and mortar restaurants, while others switched to a catering model. Some sold their trucks altogether.
And that’s what prompted Fenceline to buy the Fencepost in November 2022, since “we knew we needed food,” Lang said.
But running a restaurant was never the intention, so it was “good timing” to offer Sweetwater Gypsies a place at Fenceline, Lang said.
Plus, the wood-fired food truck had served at the cidery before, so they already had a “lovely, long-standing relationship,” Lang said.
The cidery officially announced this news on Facebook on Jan. 3, welcoming Sweetwater Gypsies “as a permanent fixture at Fenceline Cider.”
The new food truck plans to stick to what it does best – make wood-fired pies – and eventually put more energy into expanding the menu and add salads once they’re more settled, said Monica Marty, the owner of Sweetwater Gypsies.
They also plan to bring in a lot of local products; the menu will change with what’s available locally, she said.
Marty went on to say that she’s excited for the challenge of “learning a new skill set as far as managing an every day business goes, as apposed to a concession-style one.”
Just last year, Sweetwater Gypsies secured its first enclosed trailer with a wood-fired oven; for 14 years prior, it had operated with a mobile oven under a pop-up canopy tent, Marty said.
“I’m also excited to run a business that has a positive impact on the community,” Marty said.
Fenceline and Sweetwater Gypsies will “marry each other’s hours,” so there are some changes to the cidery’s hours, Lang said.
Notably, both will now be open a few weekdays – Monday, Thursday and Friday – for lunch. Both are closed Tuesdays and Wednesdays, and open at 2 p.m. on the weekends.
