Richard Skorman, co-owner of Poor Richard’s restaurant in Colorado Springs, is a staple in the community. Ever since opening a used bookstore in 1975 out of a home he rented for $100 a month, Skorman has grown the Poor Richard’s name into a multibusiness complex on North Tejon Street, which includes a restaurant, a toy shop, a café and wine bar, and, of course, a bookstore. He’s done it all alongside his wife and business partner, Patricia Seator. (Make sure you put her in there, Skorman said during an interview with The Colorado Sun).
Last week, the restaurant started offering free meals to government workers as a show of support during the shutdown.
He knows that a slice of pizza isn’t going to lighten anyone’s financial load, that a cup of tiramisu doesn’t lessen the burden of unpaid bills. But it’s about the gesture, he said.
“We feel like the workers need to know that they are appreciated, that’s what we’re trying to tell them,” Skorman said. “There’s not many of them getting rich in their jobs, but many of them have families and bills to pay. So we want them to come here and have a good meal.”
It’s worth noting that Skorman has also been awarded the Spirit of Colorado Springs Lifetime Achievement Award, was elected to city council four times, served as vice mayor from 2003-05 and ran for mayor in 2011. “So I have a particular appreciation for civil servants,” he said.
Of course, nice gestures come with a price tag, so the restaurant has set up a GoFundMe where people can donate to keep the effort going. Any money that isn’t spent on workers’ meals during the shutdown will be donated to Care and Share Food Bank, a hub that distributes food to nearly 300 pantries across southern Colorado. As of Thursday they’ve been able to raise about $1,000 for the food bank.
Care and Share is one of five food banks in the state that funnels federal money for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program — commonly called SNAP or food stamps — to local partners across 29 counties, including El Paso County, where more than 85,000 people use SNAP.
Food banks have been bracing for potential shortages after a tax and spending measure passed this summer slashed federal matching funds for SNAP to 25% from 50%, although that change is not slated to take effect until Oct. 1, 2026.
But then the federal government shut down. Colorado’s SNAP program was put on hold until the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which issues SNAP, has its funding restored. Saturday will be the first monthly payout that SNAP recipients won’t receive, worth about $120 million in food aid. On Thursday the Colorado legislature’s Joint Budget Committee approved spending $10 million from the state’s reserves to cover food banks through mid-December.
Compounding the crisis now are federal workers who don’t necessarily receive SNAP benefits, but may have gone unpaid for the past four weeks, and are increasingly turning to the already-strapped food banks for their next meal.
Federal employees who are not members of the military received partial paychecks Oct. 10, 14, or 16 depending on their pay schedules. Last Friday marked the first fully missed paycheck for employees at the Department of Defense, Health and Human Services, the Department of Veterans Affairs, the Executive Office of the President and a few other agencies, according to the Bipartisan Policy Center. The remainder of federal agencies skipped paychecks Oct. 28 and 30.
The average federal paycheck is roughly $4,700, according to the Bipartisan Policy Center. That number excludes pay received by Department of Homeland Security officers, since some 70,000 border patrol agents, deportation officers, special agents and air marshals have continued to be funded through the Trump administration’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
“The people that come to take advantage of the meal, they tend to be people that aren’t often appreciated,” Skorman said. “Someone who works at the front desk of a Social Security office, or for TSA checking in bags, or someone working for the Forest Service. But they’re out there doing really important work for all of us.”
This is the second time Poor Richard’s has offered free meals during a government shutdown. The first time was in 2019, after President Trump and Congress failed to compromise on a spending bill that hinged on Trump’s demand for $5.7 billion for a border wall.
“Some of the same people have come back, it wasn’t that long ago,” Skorman said. “You can’t not have customers that are government employees in the city of Colorado Springs.”
El Paso County is home to the largest share of Colorado’s federal workers according to 2024 data from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, and totals about one-quarter of the state’s overall federal civilian workforce. OPM did not return an immediate request for updated numbers that reflect recent layoffs.
The county’s share of government workers does not include active military or U.S. Postal Service workers. It also does not include those employed by companies contracted by the government, which have also gone unpaid.
“Nobody’s talking about them,” Skorman said of contracted workers.
In 2025, the federal government awarded $3.1 billion in contracts to businesses in El Paso County, out of about $14 billion awarded statewide. Most of El Paso County’s contracts are awarded by the Department of Defense — at about $2.1 billion — followed by $435 million from the Department of Veterans Affairs, for things like database maintenance and medical billing services.
Over their first weekend offering meals, Skorman estimated that they served about 75 workers and their families, with “a couple hundred” taking advantage of the deal by Thursday, he said. He hopes that other businesses will step up to show support — especially bigger businesses that can afford it, he said.
“I’m not sure how long we’ll go on with this, because we don’t know how long this (shutdown) will go on,’ Skorman said. “But we’re in this for the long haul.”