Kansas City landmark Nichols Lunch ceased operations Sunday after 85 years in Kansas City, owner Michael Bay said.

Rising operating costs and a thin profit margin drove the decision to close the diner, Bay said Monday, and the decision to close was hard to make.

"Our motto has always been good food, fair prices and friendly service, and the fair prices part became increasingly difficult to stick to because of the escalating costs in all areas," Bay said.

Bay and his family own the building at 39th Street and Southwest Trafficway and haven't decided yet what they'll do with it, he said.

The diner closed permanently at 9 p.m. Sunday, he said. It had about 20 full-time and about five part-time employees, Bay said.

The diner was opened in 1921 by Frank Nichols, a Greek immigrant with a third-grade education. Nichols operated the restaurant until he died in 1962.

How much do you think it would cost to save one of the city's landmarks?

According to Brian O'Rourke's attorney, Jane McMillan, and architect Jeff Bianco, it will cost about $350,000 to save O'Rourke's Diner.

A committee has been formed to help assist in the effort to reopen the diner. Larry Marino, president of Marino Crane, will head the committee, which will also include Sebastian Giuliano, mayor of Middletown; Larry McHugh, president of the Middlesex County Chamber of Commerce; and Douglas J. Bennet, president of Wesleyan University, as honorary chairmen. Other members of the committee include residents Heather Tolley-Bauer, Robert Holzberg, Jannie Janaki and Bob Wolfe.

"The city is going to support the committee as much as they can," said Geen Thazhampallath, the mayor's executive assistant.

The city will be able to help O'Rourke's get the necessary examinations to bring the building up to code. The building has to pass health department and fire marshal examinations, among others.

By Richard Salit | The Providence Journal | September 18, 2006

Wrapped in gleaming stainless steel and striped with yellow and green porcelain enamel, Tommy's Diner remained a genuine slice of Americana as everything around it changed.

Huge stores and shopping plazas surrounded it, cars zoomed by in increasing numbers and people just seemed to become more hurried than in the old days, too rushed to enjoy a homemade meat loaf or cup of soup.

So 53 years after opening on East Main Street, Tommy's Diner closed last spring. Today, unceremoniously uprooted from its foundation, it sits upon wooden supports, ready to be hauled down the road any day toward an uncertain future.

Ironically, what will take Tommy's place is its very nemesis, the type of business that can contribute to the death of a diner: Another fast-food chain with a drive-through window. A Tim Hortons coffee and doughnut shop is replacing Tommy's.

"It's the way of the world," says Peter Krones, the third and last generation of his Greek family to run Tommy's at the East Main location. "It's going to kill us just to see the diner leave."

The Vermont cob-smoked bacon and pork, buttered pancakes and freshly brewed coffee, and the hamburgers made from local beef are familiar, but the location and façade have changed.

The Farmer's Diner has been reborn, still pushing its landmark motto: food from here.

With the backing of investors, visionary Tod Murphy has opened the latest incarnation of the much-publicized eatery, in what the farmer-turned-entrepreneur hopes is a prime location: Quechee Gorge Village.

The new Farmer's Diner is still using products from within a 70-mile radius of its premises, which is the idea at the heart of his vision: to provide good old-fashioned food grown locally, helping build markets for farmers in the process.

The Quechee establishment is the second stab at that idea. The Farmer's Diner in Barre, which originally opened in July 2002, abruptly closed its doors in August 2005. The staff was laid off and the experiment, which had drawn media coverage by food writers from around the nation, came to an end. But while some thought the closure hailed the demise of the innovative model restaurant, Murphy insists it was edifying.