The last BJ’s Kountry Kitchen has closed in Fresno, but you can still get breakfast there
After 43 years in business, the name BJ’s Kountry Kitchen is no more in Fresno and Clovis.
But breakfast is not completely gone from the spot. You can soon get pancakes and eggs at the restaurant on the corner of Cedar and Herndon avenues again. It’s just getting a new name and new owners. It’s about to be The Waffle Place.
It will have the same owners as The Waffle Place on Fig Garden Drive and Brawley Avenue (who took over what used to be The Waffle Shop there).
BJ’s closed last Nov. 18 for light renovations. It’s expected to be open by Wednesday.
They plan to refresh the decor during the closure and make it into more of a The Waffle Place location.
“We’re still keeping the vibe of BJ’s same food if you think about it, just enhancing it,” said Sam Mohamed, who owns the business with his brother, Hany, and business partner, Beli Ortiz.
Ortiz moved from Los Angeles to Fresno to take over The Waffle Place on Figarden Drive last year, bringing his recipes from 15-plus years in the restaurant industry. Mohamed is also a partner in two other separate Fresno businesses: Maya Sushi Lounge and Los Gallos Taqueria.
The Herndon Avenue restaurant will still have the classics, including biscuits made with the same recipe, eggs and hash browns, but with The Waffle Place twist. That means fresh-pressed juices, scones, cookies and other baked goods. It will also have coffee drinks such as frappuccinos and lattes.
Most recent owner Geri Stiffler, who’s had it for 2.5 years, will stay working at the restaurant for a while.
She’s worked at the restaurant for 30 years, serving up the popular chile verde and country fried steaks. She decided to sell because she wants to eventually retire.
“I love waiting on people. I love talking to them,” she said.
But the back-end business stuff? Not so much, she said.
What happened to BJ’s Kountry Kitchen?
The BJ’s that just closed at the Cedar Tree Village shopping center with the R-N Market was the last of what was once 14 restaurants operating under that name in the Fresno area, many with different owners.
The other long-lasting BJ’s Kountry Kitchen, on Ashlan Avenue near Cedar Avenue, closed permanently Oct. 10. The owner said rising rent — a proposed 5% a year for each of the next three years — plus additional real estate-related costs, was the main reason for closing.
Increases in food prices, labor costs and power bills also played a role, she said.
That location staved off closure for a few years when a new owner bought it in 2022 from the founder’s daughter and reopened it after a brief shutdown. But the new owner decided against signing a new lease.
Another BJ’s on Blackstone Avenue closed years ago and has since been torn down. And the one on Shaw Avenue in Clovis is now a Triangle Drive In Burgers.
The first BJ’s Kountry Kitchen was founded by Judy Kerr in 1981 at Cedar and Clinton avenues, but moved into the Save Mart shopping center on Ashlan Avenue in the 1980s.
Every restaurant has its opening day slip-ups, but Kerr told The Bee in a 2016 interview that she forgot one major thing: plates. She had only eight. But customers liked her food, so they began bringing their own.
Judy is the J in BJ’s. The B is her ex-husband’s name, but she didn’t want to talk about him. Now the B stands for Boston, where she’s from, she said.
Why the Ks in Kountry Kitchen?
“I wanted country with a K,” she says. “I don’t know. I wanted all Ks. It just sounded cute.”
Kerr died several years ago, but her restaurants remained a place to get a classic breakfast — biscuits and gravy or perhaps something from the “omelet kountry” portion of the menu.
Over the years, the Herndon location kept its religious vibe, with John 3:16 painted on the wall in big letters and Christian music playing.
The restaurants, several under the ownership of Gary and Toni Honeycutt, won the “Friendliest Service” at the California Restaurant Association awards more than three dozen times over the years. Honeycutt, who was on the organization’s board of directors for the Fresno chapter, also won several other awards as a small business owner before selling his restaurants.
Losing the BJ’s Kountry Kitchen name is the end of an era.
“It’s sad. It is sad,” said Stiffler, the outgoing owner who has worked with many people over the decades. “I grew up with a lot of these women that have been there for long time.”
