OGDEN — Almost exactly six years after opening its doors on Historic 25th Street, No Frills Diner on 25th in Ogden welcomed its last customer Friday.

Owner Ron Yeates cited several factors that left him little choice but to shutter the restaurant after nearly two decades of running it. However, despite the adversities he’s seen along the way, he would also explain that it hasn’t always been rough sailing and that there are many steps people can take to make a restaurant successful even with the headwinds that the industry faces locally and beyond.

On the diner’s last day of operation, Yeates sat down with the Standard-Examiner to discuss his time in the restaurant business and what the diner has meant to him.

12th Street

Yeates noted that it took him a while to get into the restaurant business in the first place.

Rob Nielsen, Standard-Examiner

“I worked at La-Z-Boy Manufacturing in Tremonton for 28 years right out of high school,” he said. “And they closed that plant up in 2008. And I took my retirement from there and I bought the restaurant down here in Ogden.”

At the time, No Frills Diner was located on 12th Street where he dealt with something that would ultimately haunt the current location.

“We’ve dealt with construction most of the time we’ve had it,” he said. “Because right after we bought the one on 12th Street, they decided to do their construction on 12th Street when they widened it, and that went on for, I think, three to four years. That was about a year and a half in from buying it.”

Yeates said it was a major test of the restaurant’s staying power, but he had a lot of help at the time.

“We about didn’t make it through that,” he said. “If I hadn’t had a good landlord to help me and sometimes didn’t make me pay the rent, I wouldn’t have made it at that point.”

Rob Nielsen, Standard-Examiner

He said that a little over a decade later, the landlord sold the building to Fresenius, which sought to tear down the building for additional parking.

Yeates opted to relocate.

No Frills Diner on 25th 

Yeates said the search took him several places until he found the right fit on the southwest corner of 25th Street and Lincoln Avenue.

“I looked at several places — some were expensive, some were just dumps,” he said. “And I found this place and I really fell in love with the looks of it.”

He said after installing a kitchen at the location, No Frills Diner on 25th opened up in November 2020.

Rob Nielsen, Standard-Examiner

“The first couple years,” he said, “we made pretty good money. It was good. It was productive.”

Yeates said in the years he’s run No Frills Diner on 25th, there was one part of the year that always stuck out to him.

“The holidays are great here,” he said. “I love it on 25th Street because the people are out, everybody’s usually in pretty good moods.  You go back-and-forth with the lights, and they come up and down 25th because they decorate all that up now and then. I think that’s my favorite time of year is on 25th is Christmas time.”

However, after a few years, adjacent public parking was taken out, which Yeates said led to a 20%-25% drop in sales.

Then came the road construction on Lincoln Avenue and other developments in downtown Ogden.

Rob Nielsen, Standard-Examiner

“Then they tore the road up,” he said. “It’s been tore up for about nine months or so now — I’m not sure the exact time — and that’s cost us a lot of foot traffic and stuff like that. And then … they put in the paid parking, and another 25% drop almost immediately. Just a lot of comments from customers that they would not pay Ogden City to come down here and shop, and that was probably our final straw. We were down probably 47% of where we usually ran at. And so we ended up behind on our rent.”

Yeates said that the building’s ownership ultimately sealed the restaurant’s fate.

“The landlord, he helped me for a little bit,” he said. “For a few months, they let me try and catch up and do stuff. Then all of a sudden, he just decided that he wanted to do something different with the building. My lease was up at the end of November, so he just wasn’t going to renew my lease anymore. We ended up getting an eviction notice from him that gave us 10 days to get out.”

He noted that Friday marked the eighth day of 10. The last two days, people who patronized the diner’s recent auction of items will come to collect their items.

‘Make sure your people are happy and your customers will be happy’

Yeates said nearly two decades in the restaurant business has been a learning experience.

“When I did it on 12th Street, it was pretty relaxing,” he said. “I went into it debt-free, so my main operations were what I’d have to worry about. But I’ve learned a lot about how to deal with people. I thought that I knew that from working at La-Z-Boy for 28 years, but it was a whole different ballgame. And I’ve just met so many great people. It’s been awesome with people that I’ve met.”

He said he’s still trying to figure out what’s next.

“Right now I’ve decided not to worry a whole lot about that and just get through this, and then after I’m done here Sunday, then I’ll start thinking about what I need to do with my life because I don’t have any plans yet,” he said. “I’ve got a lot of things I could do, but I’m almost 64, and I was thinking about getting ready to retire, and this kind of put a hole in it. I don’t know if I want to stay here. I don’t know if I want to relocate. I’ve been offered a couple of jobs in a couple of different restaurants, but I’ve just got to decide what I want to do because I’ve been running this business by myself seven days a week. I’ve been here like 10, 12 hours a day, seven days a week. I’ve kind of lost track of my other life. It’s just been this.”

However, Yeates had some advice for those who are looking to make their way into the restaurant business.

“A lot of people want to open restaurants because they can cook,” he said. “There’s so much more to it than that. Read your contracts and what you’re signing. That’s probably my biggest fault is I have a couple of things that I should have watched a little closer. And I have somebody that I can really trust with my money. I don’t try and do all my own books, but I’ve got a friend who’s an accountant that’s very good at it. If I hadn’t had him, I’d probably be in trouble.”

He said one rule stands above the rest.

“But my biggest thing is make sure your people are happy and your customers will be happy,” he said. “And they’ve got to want to come to work and be at work. I would say a lot of times you’ve just got to sit back and listen. Listen to what your customers are saying and listen to what your staff are saying because you need to listen or you’re not going to make it.”