The Inland Cafe is owned again by Kristi Hensley, who sold the restaurant in 2020 after owning it for 13 years and rebuilding after a January 2019 fire.

One of Baker City’s favorite dining spots is slated to reopen on Wednesday, May 3, and with a familiar face running the operation.

The Inland Cafe is back under Kristi Hensley’s ownership, and she’s eager to get started after a three-year hiatus.

“We’ve got a lot of changes and stuff going on, so I’m pretty excited,” Hensley said on Tuesday, April 25.

The cafe has been closed since Feb. 21 of this year during the ownership transfer. She carried the original sales contract during the past three years.

Her return to the Inland culminates a circuitous route that dates to the cold morning of Jan. 13, 2019.

That day a fire nearly gutted the cafe at 2715 10th St.

Although Hensley, who had bought the cafe in 2007 from Sharron and Don Orr, reopened the Inland in August 2019, a series of other personal challenges prompted her to sell the restaurant several months later.

Within a month of the fire, Hensley’s parents passed away.

Then, in June 2019, someone burned down her mother’s home.

“Mentally, I couldn’t do it anymore,” she said.

After the fire her insurance was canceled. While looking for a new insurer she met Jerry Shaw, and Hensley sold the Inland to the Shaw family in March 2020, just before the pandemic.

“At that time, it was really a good thing for me to take a step back and get my life back in order,” Hensley said. “I’ve had a few years and I probably wouldn’t have made it through COVID honestly, if I would have still been around after everything I had just gone through the last year.”

But now, three years later, she is back at the Inland.

Cafe regulars will be happy to see familiar staff members returning to the cafe. Hensley said she has lowered a lot of menu prices.

Having worked for a food distribution company for 15 years before she bought the cafe, she’s experienced in managing a restaurant and dealing with food issues.

“I am confident that, even though prices have gone up significantly, that I can still be really reasonable,” Hensley said. “But you know a lot of our elderly people, it’s expensive to go buy groceries too and a lot of them depend on us to be able to supply them with food at a reasonable cost.”

She said the portions might not be as big as they had been, but no one will leave the Inland hungry.

The cafe has six to eight new employees, with most of the previous staff returning.

The menu will be missing a few items that either weren’t popular or weren’t cost-effective to offer.

“In order to keep costs down, we’ve shrunk it a little,” Hensley said.

But she will be making soups and pies, and offering more specials.

“We have made the menu just a little bit smaller to try to move things faster,” Hensley said.

“I know a lot of times when you get so busy, it takes a while to get your food so I’m trying to alleviate that by making the menu a little smaller and easier for the cooks so we can streamline things.”

There will be an initial change in the schedule, on Sundays and Mondays only, when the cafe will close at 2 p.m. so she can get new employees trained.

The Inland is open Tuesday through Saturday from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m., and Sunday and Monday from 7 a.m. to 2 p.m., the schedule for the latter two days temporary.

“I’m at the point where if they can’t do it the way I want it, then we’re not going to do it at all,” she said. “So, we’ll close at two until I can get everybody up and trained and I’m confident that they’re going to put out quality food. And if they can’t put out quality food in a reasonable amount of time, I just would rather not be open at this point.”

Ultimately, Hensley plans to return to the usual hours of 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. every day, including Sunday and Monday.

She said she is receiving messages every day from people who are excited about the cafe reopening.

She posts frequent updates on the Inland Cafe’s Facebook page.

For now, she is working on cleaning the cafe and having the utilities checked and serviced to make sure everything is working.

She’s not planning a grand reopening, but Pepsi gave her a sign telling passers-by that the cafe has a new operator.

“I think every day is going to be a grand reopening for the next three months with summer starting up,” Hensley said. “Honestly, it’s going to go back to the same old Inland Cafe it was when I had it before. That’s what I’m striving for.”

She said they will be removing the point of sale machine and go back to their handwritten tickets, a cash register, and old fashioned milk shakes and made from scratch meals.

“That’s what people really, really want these days. They want a good meal at a decent price and something they can afford to go out to eat twice a week instead of once a month,” Hensley said.

During the years after she sold the cafe, Hensley worked at the Senior Center, helping in the kitchen and with Meals on Wheels.

She also worked as the food services director for the Baker School District, but she didn’t enjoy sitting in an office.

“I’m a people person,” Hensley said as she sat in a booth at the Inland. “I really belong here, I think.”

“I’m a people person. I really belong here, I think.”

— Kristi Hensley, Inland Cafe owner