03/26/2022
Lately, but especially today for some reason, we have been inundated with questions and concerns asking about when we will be reopening. The short answer to that question is never, at least at our original location. Many of you will ask why. We believe the answer to that question is self evident. This country is experiencing a crisis in the production and supply of food, and it is about to get much worse. Costs for everything are skyrocketing and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. There is a looming food shortage on the horizon. We are also experiencing a crisis in the labor market, as anyone who is an employer will be able to tell you. These conditions do not allow us to run a profitable business at our original location under any circumstances. Unless you feel like paying $20 for a hamburger. And before you point out that there are still restaurants up and running allow us to point out that these businesses are struggling more than they ever have before. Just ask their owners. They are either losing money or barely breaking even. They have nowhere near enough help. Most of them have lease agreements or mortgages on their property and therefore they are not in a position to close as easily and effortlessly as we are. But because we have owned our property outright since the 60’s we are able to make this prudent business decision, and that is exactly what it is. No more no less. We love our customers and we love this community. We will always cherish the memories that we have made here. But we are not willing to enter into a losing agreement for the sake of keeping our restaurant open at its original, iconic location.
That being said, the Hungry Onion will survive. To be candid we are already in the process of scouting out our new future home. In order to survive and carry our legacy into the next generation we will need to build a restaurant that is capable of serving many more people. That is the only way that a restaurant can be profitable in the future, and especially, the current environment. Our original location limits the amount of people we can serve and prolongs the amount of time it takes to serve them. We have always been aware of this and have done everything we can to mitigate the problem. But we are dealing with a limited amount of space and a 75 year old building. Only so much is possible in that limited amount of space. The Hungry Onion of the future will be a fast food chain akin to a McDonald’s or Wendy’s. This business model will allow us to offer franchise opportunities to aspiring entrepreneurs and issue common stock to the public, yet another opportunity for the customers we love to invest in us and support us and even profit with us. We are very excited about what the future holds for our brand. And we are very thankful for the decades of loyalty that our customers have enthusiastically displayed. Thank you for being a part of our family. We look forward to a huge grand opening of our new location and our new business model, but we cannot say for certain when that will be. What we can say for certain is that it will be the biggest thing we have ever created and it will take our small family restaurant nationwide. Can you imagine a chain of Hungry Onion restaurants based in Idaho and scattered across the country? We can. And that’s exactly what we are going to do…
