The family-owned restaurant chain Egg Harbor Café will open a location in Oak Park at 1111 South Blvd. this year.
Egg Harbor Café has many breakfast and lunch dishes, including omelets, skillets, pancakes, French toast, burgers, salads and sandwiches. The business has locations across Illinois, Georgia and Wisconsin, according to its website.
The chain has signed a lease for the new location but will make decorative changes to the space before moving in, said Cameron Davis, the village’s economic vitality administrator. Luckily, the business won’t have to do significant structural or utility work, Davis said.
“They have not given us [the village] an exact date of opening, but I know, from conversations we’ve had with them, that their goal is to move as quickly as they can to open,” he said.
The site at 1111 South Blvd. was vacant for almost two years, Davis said, after the previous restaurant closed during the COVID-19 pandemic. The space used to be Wild Onion Tied House, so there’s already a kitchen in the facility.
“The current space is in great shape,” he said. “It’s just going to undergo a restaurant refresh.”
The Egg Harbor Café staff looking to come to the area worked with the village and local real estate broker David King, who represented the landlord of the space, Davis said.
“Oak Park is a very economically vibrant community,” he said. “The community has been very supportive of long-existing restaurants and new restaurants.”
The village often has new restaurants opening, Davis said, including a few more in the works this year. They want to open in Oak Park, he said, because the density of the population equals a lot of potential customers. Residents also like having choices.
“Competition is healthy and good,” Davis said. “It makes everyone strive to do their very best and to offer the very best products.”
Most communities would be happy to have one new restaurant in a year, Davis said, but Oak Park is expecting to open anywhere from five to 10 new ones this year.
“The village is very excited to have Egg Harbor Café join the Oak Park business community,” Davis said.