Vertical Diner Portland

05/28/2026

Here’s a tightened version:

We’ve got our schedule sorted and our team reorganized — we’re open 9 AM–9 PM starting Thursday, May 28, and plan to hold that schedule every day through June 14. If anything changes, we’ll keep you posted, but so far things are looking good!

A reminder that we’re operating with a very small team, so please be patient with us as we do our best to finish strong.

We truly appreciate your support, flexibility, and patience during this time. Closing is no small thing, and your understanding means the world to us.

One more thing worth saying: we informed our team back in February that we would be closing on June 14 — and every single one of them chose to stay through the end. That kind of loyalty and dedication is rare, and we don’t take it lightly. These are exceptional people who show up every day to serve you with care, even knowing what’s coming. That says everything about who they are, and about why we started Vertical Diner in 2019. We are, and always have been, deeply committed to hospitality — and that commitment carries us all the way to the last day.

Thank you Portland and Beyond!
Blessings, Peace and Love!

05/28/2026

Closed Thursday morning, opening at 4 PM in the late afternoon.

Sorry for any inconvenience this may cause, but we’re incredibly shortstaffed. I need to prep for operations as we go through the last three weeks of being open for business.

See you soon! Thank you for all your support.
We appreciate you.

05/27/2026

Thank you for of your kind messages. We appreciate your patience with our situation. We let our team know we were closing in February instead of the day they showed up for work. We already have lost 2 people that were critical members of this team. It has been challenging keeping up with business. If anyone is great at vegan prep. We will hire you for the last 3 weeks. It has been slammed. We feel great doing the right thing but in some ways are being challenged for doing this.

We like to do the right thing, like treating everyone as equal. We come at our operations and services with love at a time where love, tolerance and compassion is looked down upon by ignorant, judgmental and angry people. Veganism was never about hatred.

So for all of you people making false, demeaning comments about our business. Shut the heck up!
Have you met me?

We operate business with a clean, professional, ethical approach founded with love for all.

We have had years of online bullying directed at me personally. It has been super gross to see in this Portland Vegan Community. Unreal.

Thank you for all of the real humans that are filled with love like us!

As for these sh*tty Real Racists that are sitting behind their keyboards with white guilt. These people were either bullied or were the ones bullying These leaders of vegan businesses, vegan social media groups, and even journalists have bullied me.
These people promoting hatred, fascism, division, have hurt the reputation of a great vegan business.

Do you really think that this is a MAGA vegan restaurant? What a joke. Has anyone met a vegan white supremacist. In 29 years of being vegan I have never met one.

To all of you bullies, I will not call you personally out for your actions. Why? This business is about hospitality, professionalism, love, animal rights, human rights, and our earth. Y’all haters will learn that your social media likes is just pumping the same stuff that you dislike in this world. You get to stew in your own stinky! Karma is real y’all!

Thank you!
-Ian,
Founder,
Owner,
Vertical Diner
Est. 1998

05/23/2026

We’re very sorry for having to close, but we have had a hard time running out of food items and we’re prepping right now so that we can have our full menu ready to go for tomorrow. We will be open 9am -9pm Sunday and Monday

05/21/2026

05/21/2026

We look forward to seeing you all in our last 3 weeks of operation!

05/20/2026

These pictures were from July 7, 2019 the first day we opened. It took us six months to get this place put back together into a usable, functional restaurant and also still retain its original charm from 1969 when it was built.
Over the years we’ve had many independent movies as well as college project films, and also major Hollywood feature length, film films, and series shows filmed at the Vertical Diner. We are excited to announce that after we close on June 14, a local filmmaker will be shooting some scenes at Vertical Diner. We’re also hoping that someone else will take over this wonderful space and keep it classic diner like for many years to come!

We’re getting a lot of restaurant operators walking through checking out the space to see if they’ve got the chops to do it. We really need someone that knows diner love to take over the space. Whoever has diner love will do incredibly well here! We have a return key option for that operator! This building has been set up so efficiently, it’s just amazing.

Hope to serve everyone over the next four weeks. We appreciate all the support of everyone coming out to dine with us a few less times before he shut down! It will help us with affording the process of shutting everything down, which is a huge process.

We’re very grateful for all of your support and messages of love and care. We have loved serving you all over the last 7 years.

05/18/2026

Please look at the last post to get all of the information on our closing! We appreciate all of your support last week! It is amazing that we never had a post go so far until we announced we were closing. Darn. Social media is very responsive to tragedy, drama and chaos. What does that mean for our society. It is pretty scary. Never a better time than now to start some good old time zines!

05/12/2026

Portland and Beyond,

We want to let all of our amazing guests know that we have loved serving you since July 2019.
We will be closing the Portland location of Vertical Diner, and June 14th will be our last day of service. We have made long-term friendships, found family, and learned so much over the last 7 years. We wish we could continue to serve all of you, but the business has been economically challenging for a long time. We had planned to close years ago after the pandemic, but fell in love with our amazing customers and couldn’t bring ourselves to do it. At this time, the costs of operation are unsustainable.

We will continue to operate the Vertical Diner location in Salt Lake City, Utah, where we started it all in 1998. We hope we can serve you there someday!

We are going to miss you all. We hope to see you before we close on June 14th.
Please let any restaurant owners know that our turn key 4,500-square-foot restaurant space — with a huge parking lot and an efficiently designed layout — will be available for lease on July 1st. We can connect you with the building owners if you send us a direct message. It would also make an incredible food truck lot for the right visionary.

Please be patient with us over the next 2 months as we may begin to reduce our menu offerings as we get closer to the closing date. We also have a smaller staff now to help control costs, and because it is hard to hire for just 2 months of work. Our team is committed to working until the very end — please be kind to them. We shared this news with our team in February, and they are all sticking it out until the end. They are the best team ever, and we appreciate them so much.

This is very sad for us, but we are excited to focus on our lives and other ventures. We are so grateful for this experience. It has been a lot of work, but serving vegan food to as many people as possible has always been our mission.

We are also hoping to get our Tender Tiger vegan wings into Oregon distribution soon, so you can still enjoy them at restaurants and bars all over Oregon.

Best wishes to you all!
— The Vertical Diner