09/17/2026
Starting next week, Hemi’s will officially be open 7AM–2PM, 7 days a week.
That means this Wednesday, Thursday and Friday will be our last regular evening shifts for the time being.
This decision has not been an easy one, they never are. The reality is that running a small restaurant looks a lot different today than it did even a few years ago when we started. The cost of doing business in Illinois continues to rise, as we all know. A lot of places are closing, and I promise you, it’s for reasons beyond their control. I am experiencing these issues first hand every month. Not only have we been fortunate enough to clear these pitfalls as they come, but we’ve been incredibly blessed to have so much support from this community.
At the same time, staffing and maintaining a consistent evening shift has probably been our single biggest challenge over the last three years. We’ve spent a lot of time trying to make it work.
And that doesn’t necessarily mean evenings are gone forever. If we decide to bring regular dinner hours back, we’d like to do it the right way from scratch with a new, more manageable evening menu to build that side of Hemi’s back up from the ground.
Maybe that gets us back to having the doors open morning through evening, seven days a week.
While our hours are getting a little shorter, we’re not slowing down. If anything, we’ve got more things we want to work on than ever.
We want to finally launch online ordering. We want to keep expanding our specialty breakfast menu, add more light lunch menu options alongside our hearty dinner plates, run more one-off breakfast and lunch specials, build and launch that catering program I’ve been working on for two years, advertise more consistently, and make more time to get Hemi’s involved in our community.
Our goal is to become the kind of breakfast place worth making a trip for, while still being the same hometown diner our regulars know and love.
One thing we’re especially happy about with this change is that nobody is losing their job. Between Hemi’s and our second business, Broadway Coffee House, we’ve been able to move things around and keep everyone working.
We will be serving pizza a few nights a week very very soon at Broadway, so keep your eyes open for an update.
Again, thank you all for your continued support. We look forward to seeing you for breakfast and lunch.
