Colossus Bread, the small chain of popular artisan bakeries, quietly celebrated its fifth anniversary in Belmont Shore a couple of weeks ago, but they’re gearing up for a bigger celebration.
Kristin Colazas Rodriguez, the Long Beach-born baker who founded Colossus, is excited to unveil an expanded Second Street shop with seating and a full-service kitchen as soon as next week, with a grand re-opening planned for July.
“It feels good. I’m not gonna lie, I wasn’t sure if we were going to make it. We’ve had a lot of challenges in this space in particular,” Rodriguez said.
Colossus Bread opened its Belmont Shore location in 2021 after months of delays, which were just the start of a multi-year battle to create the shop Rodriguez always envisioned there.
When Rodriguez took over the space, which had been home to La Strada restaurant for 27 years, she was excited to open right away. It already had most of the equipment they needed and had been operating as a restaurant just months before, so Rodriguez thought it would be easy to get started, but the city told her that too much time had passed and she needed to get new permits.
Rodriguez said she “jumped through all the hoops” to get open, and they went a couple of years without any issues. Eventually, though, someone complained about their seating and the lack of a publicly accessible restroom. In September 2024, the city made them remove the few seats they had inside and the outdoor patio that had been there for years.
Rodriguez said she spent around $10,000 to try to fix the patio and get it repermitted, but was told after all her efforts that the only way she could have any seats would be to fully redo the space to make the bathroom accessible to customers.
“It just didn’t make sense here,” Rodriguez said. “We told our landlords, like, ‘Hey, I don’t think we’re gonna be able to make this work.’”
For a year, Rodriguez tried to relocate, looking for another open space on Second Street, to no avail. She was starting to give up hope when the business next door to Colossus moved out, creating an opportunity to expand.
The original space will continue to operate as is, with quick-service coffee, pastries and to-go items, and the new area next door will be a full-service restaurant open for breakfast, lunch and dinner.
“I kind of see this as more of a return to what our original vision for this space was, but also a bit of an expansion on it,” Rodriguez said. “I’m excited for it, because we still have our chef on from when we first started, and there’s food that we’re testing now that we tested way back when. We’re revisiting it, we’re tweaking it, and we’re talking about the menu in a bigger way.”
Customers who have been with Colossus since the beginning can look forward to the return of fan favorites like the soft scramble and sourdough pizzas every day.
In the future, Rodriguez looks forward to offering patio seating once again as a second phase of the expansion. Then she’ll finally be ready to settle in.
“I am really excited to just kind of like chill out and make this the best place it can be,” she said.
Colossus Bread, 4716 Second St., is open Monday through Thursday from 6 a.m. to 4 p.m., Fridays from 6 a.m. to 8 p.m., Saturdays from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m., and Sundays from 7 a.m. to 4 p.m.