The Original Pantry Café, which closed six months ago amid a sale of the business and a labor dispute with its unionized employees, will reopen to the public on Dec. 31, officials announced Thursday.
The downtown diner's new owner, real estate entrepreneur Leo Pustilnikov, and officials with Unite Here Local 11, which represents its employees, held a celebratory event outside the eatery Thursday morning to hail an agreement that will allow the reopening of the famed restaurant with the same group of workers.
The Pantry originally opened in 1924 and was a downtown dining staple until its closure earlier this year.
The union called the restaurant's planned reopening "a ray of hope in a dark time for our city."
Pustilnikov told KCAL9 Thursday morning the Pantry is a symbol of the resilience of downtown Los Angeles.
"There aren't many (restaurants) that are 101 years old," he told the station. "There aren't many that are in downtown and have lived through the ups and downs of downtown. So I think that the Pantry really is the story of L.A. and downtown L.A., which has gone through its ups and downs, which I've been investing in for almost decades now. And so I thought it made sense."
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The restaurant closed March 2 after the union and the Richard J. Riordan Administrative Trust, which owned the restaurant following the 2023 death of former Mayor Richard Riordan, who had owned it since 1981, were unable to reach an agreement to require the trust to keep on the employees and their union representation even under new ownership, according to the Los Angeles Times.
The union credits the restaurant's reopening to "a community-led campaign, including protests, pancake fundraisers, and public pressure."
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