By Pat Ferrier
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Several Larimer County businesses will be front and center next week when Democrats take over Denver; others will stay tucked behind the scenes and some already have done their work and cleared out.

There’s no question local companies are helping give the Democratic National Convention a distinctly Colorado flavor.

From locally made salsas and cheeses to solar-powered lawn mowers and baby sitters, Fort Collins business owners are jumping on the DNC’s economic bandwagon hoping to cash in from national exposure and a captive audience.

Delegates will get a taste of the rich MouCo cheeses and red, chunky Rocky Mountain salsa; journalists will recycle their party waste through ZeroHero, and Front Range SeekingSitters will care for the younger set.

The influx of 50,000 delegates, journalists and dignitaries — most from out of state — is boosting the bottom line for companies such as MouCo Cheese Co., which had its best month ever in July.

“We’ve been annihilated,” co-founder Robert Poland said as caterers, hotels and restaurants up their orders in preparation for the weeklong party that ends Aug. 28 with a Barack Obama pep rally at Invesco Field.

Poland expects to make 30,000 rounds of cheese, split among MouCo’s three products: camembert, ColoRouge and blue cheese.

“A lot of people are leveraging this … it’s not just the extra guests,” Poland said. Stores such as King Soopers and Whole Foods want to showcase local products to a new clientele.

MouCo’s exposure at the DNC already has been good for the company’s short-term bottom line, but Poland expects a long-term boost.

“When people are exposed to (the cheese) at special events, they often become customers,” Poland said. “Since we do sell in different places through the country, it should be good for sales outside Colorado.”

MouCo has been talking about the convention since before Denver became the host city when an employee pointed out the opportunities.

The company began working to position itself with food service providers and vendors such as Aramark, Shamrock and the larger distribution houses. The move paid off as delegates and visitors will munch on MouCo cheeses at a pre-convention staff barbecue as well as parties at the Pepsi Center and Invesco Field.

Rocky Mountain Salsa Co. will contribute more than 300 8-ounce jars of chunky red salsa for delegate gift baskets, leading the Fort Collins based company to step up production, said co-owner Gregg Lasley, whose wife, Amy, developed Rocky Mountain Salsa into a wholesale operation serving retailers across Colorado.

The orders have come through Colorado Food Showroom, an 11-year-old one-stop shop for specialty food products from Colorado.

The increased DNC business means “a pretty large (pay) check in August,” Lasley said.

It would have taken three or four months to sell the number of small 8-ounce jars it sold for the DNC, Lasley said. “That’s (the size) gift baskets really like.”

Going green, seeing green

The footprints of other local businesses have set the convention up to be the greenest in history.

The committee early on hired the Brendle Group, 226 Remington St., to develop a sustainability management plan.

Brendle also is working with Xcel Energy to audit hotels and restaurants to get them up to speed with greening the business sector, said Judy Dorsey, owner of The Brendle Group.

Dorsey couldn’t quantify the financial bump it’s given her company, but said the DNC’s emphasis on green business and clean energy promotes public awareness, which is good for everyone.

“I can’t say we’ve measured this percent increase in revenue because of the convention in Colorado but I can say it’s good for Colorado and all businesses that are increasing their performance around sustainability,” she said.

A relatively new Fort Collins company will help the DNC work toward plans to reuse, recycle or compost 85 percent of the waste generated.

ZeroHero, founded 18 months ago, provides composting and recycling services, biodiesel deliveries and carbon offsetting programs to help events be more sustainable.

ZeroHero expects to recover or divert 80 percent to 90 percent of the total waste generated from the media party Saturday night at Elitch Gardens and the Green Frontier Fest Sunday at the convention center sculpture park through composting and recycling.

The company will provide waste station tents, resource recovery tents and teams of volunteers to help “manage the recycling and composting and minimizing the landfill waste,” John Long said.

Long also has a separate contract to manage 1,500 volunteers at the Pepsi Center and Convention Center.

“This is a chance to get our name more statewide,” said Long, whose company works festivals such as NewWestFest this weekend.

Caring for the littlest delegates

While their moms and dads are casting their votes for the Democratic nominee for president, Front Range SeekingSitters will be caring for the littlest delegates.

SeekingSitters, owned by Fort Collins resident Sarah Kruse, as of this week, has about 10 families coming in for the convention who have hired their services.

SeekingSitters is listed on the convention host committee’s Web site for those who are bringing young families to Denver.

SeekingSitters provides the sitter, checks backgrounds, credit history, Facebook and MySpace pages, pays the sitters and gets them to the hotel or lodging.

“Especially when you’re from out of town and don’t know who the hotel is using … we want to make sure we provide the safest and most reliable sitters to the families,” Kruse said.

She personally interviews every potential sitter. “I would never hire sitters that I wouldn’t use with my own family,” she said.

At this point, SeekingSitters isn’t caring for any famous children, but Kruse is still hoping.

Let’s see, how old are the Obama kids?