Po' Boys at 15: 'There's nothing better' than working with family
Apr. 29—URBANA — For Jean Rasner-Stimmel, it doesn't feel like it's been 15 years since her family opened the new iteration of Po' Boys Restaurant.
"In some aspects, it doesn't seem like it at all," she said. "And then it also feels like we've done this forever."
The business, which opened in 2009, celebrates its anniversary Wednesday.
In celebration of the milestone, the restaurant is offering half-priced pizza all day to customers who dine in on Thursday, Rasner-Stimmel said.
The original Po' Boys was founded by the late Arnie Yarber and was located on East Columbia Avenue in Champaign. It closed in 2006 after 53 years of being in business.
As Champaign-Urbana natives, her parents had fond memories of the restaurant, Rasner-Stimmel said.
Jim and Elizabeth Rasner later moved to California but returned to the area after retiring, and Rasner-Stimmel decided to follow them. For a time, she handled accounting for Silvercreek Restaurant and the Courier Café.
As she was considering new career paths, it so happened that her father's friend, Ivan Richardson, had purchased the Po' Boys sauce recipe from Yarber and wanted to know if any of the Rasners would be interested in running a restaurant.
Jim and Elizabeth Rasner were the original investors and convinced their children to start the business with them.
"My brother, Andy, was living in California, managing a restaurant at a time," Rasner-Stimmel said. "So Andy and I both had experience with restaurant work and we were like, 'Let's do this.' So my brother and his wife, Lindsay, who is now our kitchen manager, they moved from California here, and we started the business."
The Rasners initially opened Po' Boys at the old TK Wendl's building on High Cross Road in 2009. However, Rasner-Stimmel noted that it was a challenging location, and the business later relocated to their current spot at Five Points.
Her father is the sole proprietor and has semi-retired from the restaurant, though he still helps out with accounting. Rasner-Stimmel and her brother are the two main managers for Po' Boys, and their spouses have also been involved with the restaurant from the start.
"If you can run a business with your family, there's nothing better," Rasner-Stimmel said.
She added that while they knew they had big shoes to fill, they've also enjoyed making Po' Boys their own.
"We expanded our menu from just the major Polish pork beef sandwiches," she said. "We didn't take any of the side recipes from them, so we had to create our own. Potato salad, coleslaw, baked beans, everything else. And then we started doing desserts, so now we have a really good pie chef that's been with us for a decade-plus. And the pizzas we kind of made our own too."
Rasner-Stimmel said they've appreciated the community's support, particularly during the pandemic when they had to put a pause on dine-in service.
It feels "incredible" to make it to this milestone, she said.
"Restaurants don't always last past the first few years, so we knew that going into it," she said. "And we're very fortunate that the town took to us so well."
