Jack Ranch Cafe closing at James Dean memorial in SLO County. ‘It’s time to leave’

After decades of serving up food to weary travelers, ranchers and the odd James Dean fan, an iconic restaurant at Highway 46 in Cholame is set to close this weekend.

Owner Chris Mize said the Jack Ranch Cafe will serve its last meal on Sunday, putting an end to decades of business.

“We’ve been thinking about it for a while,” Mize told The Tribune on Thursday. “I’m 63, and I don’t want to do it anymore. I’m tired.”

Mize said the decision to shutter comes after COVID-19 and the pandemic negatively impacted the business — “after COVID it lost some of its luster” — plus challenges posed by high gas prices, an ever-more-busy highway and other factors.

“It’s hard to leave, but I think it’s time to leave,” she said.

‘It’s an icon’: Customers lament loss of Cholame restaurant

The Jack Ranch Cafe is perhaps most well known to out-of-towners due to its proximity to the site of James Dean’s fatal crash in 1955; a memorial in the parking lot regularly attracts fans of the late actor.

Those fans also often head inside the restaurant, where a bevy of Dean souvenirs such as mugs and T-shirts with the actor’s infamous pout have long been for sale.

On Thursday, those souvenirs were running low because Mize said she didn’t re-order any due to the impending closure.

The restaurant itself has historically been a haven for locals and those traveling along the busy highway that links the coast to Fresno and Bakersfield — a place to stop to get a good, old-fashioned burger or homemade biscuits and gravy.

On Thursday, about a half-dozen groups stopped in to eat at the soon-to-close cafe.

“It’s just sad,” Paul Johnson of Shandon said while eating his meal. “It’s sad that this is closing. It’s an icon. ... Most of us remember when we were born, it was here. It’s been here forever.”

Johnson and other diners noted that the restaurant is run by “great people” in a “great spot.”

“She’s the salt of the earth,” Brandy McCormack of Shandon said of Mize.

Mize said the hardest part of closing Jack Ranch Cafe will be saying goodbye to the restaurant’s longtime customers, especially considering she’s worked there herself for 30 years.

Mize started as a waitress in 1992 before buying the business in 2012.

“The worst is leaving the customers,” Mize said. “People have been eating here for years. We’ve had families where we’ve watched their kids grow up.”

“It has a lot of good things,” she added.

Highway 46 restaurant has gone by multiple names over decades

A restaurant has stood in that location on Highway 46 for almost 70 years, though Mize said she thinks its possible one has been there much longer.

“Since at least the ‘50s,” she said. “I’ve had old-timers saying it was well before that, though.”

Mize said she’d been told the business was home to the area’s first drive-through in 1928, where farmers would stop by to pick up supplies from the window.

Tribune archives indicate an unnamed restaurant was at the location as early as 1952, and then one called the Cholame Cafe was there as of 1957 and operated through the ‘60s before closing at some point for an unspecified amount of time.

A fictitious business name statement was then published in the July 3, 1978, edition of what was then the Telegram-Tribune, announcing the opening of a restaurant named Stella’s Country Kitchen, owned by Edward and Stella Randall.

Prior to that, it appears to have been an auto garage and grocery store.

The business switched hands numerous times over the years and has gone by multiple names: Stella’s, Aggie’s Cholame Restaurant and, of course, the Jack Ranch Cafe.

In 1989, it was acquired by Sandra and Roger Warner and the business was given its current name, according to a May 1989 Telegram-Tribune article.

Mize bought the business in 2012.

What happens next for restaurant building?

It is unclear what might happen next with the building that houses the restaurant.

Mize said she hopes someone else opens a business at the location, though she was not aware of any specific plans for it going ahead.

“I hope something else comes here,” she said. “If somebody takes it, I hope they do it justice.”

The Jack Ranch Cafe property is owned by the Hearst Corp., which also owns the surrounding ranch land.

A request for comment from Hearst was not returned Thursday.

Mize, for her part, won’t be going far.

She said she still plans to live in Paso Robles as she pursues other activities during her retirement.

As she prepares for the next chapter of her life, Mize said she wanted to thank all the customers who have been a part of the Jack Ranch Cafe story over the years.

“I just wanna say that we love them, and ‘thank you,’ “ she told The Tribune. “And we really mean that.”