Owner of Historic New Jersey Diner on Business, Costs, and Avocados | Invesloan.com

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Jim Greberis, who runs and co-owns Summit Diner with his wife, Michele. Summit began serving customers in the late 1920s and moved to its current location in 1939. It’s one of New Jersey’s oldest diners. This essay has been edited for length and clarity.

My uncle and father-in-law bought Summit Diner in 1964, and I began working here in 1980, so I’ve been here for 45 years. I’ve had customers who have been coming here since they were five and are now grown adults. It’s a tight-knit community. We get everyone from bankers and construction workers to tourists and professional athletes coming in here.

What’s kept me in the diner business for so long is that this is what I know. I’ve been in it since I was 12. My dad owned a diner in Irvington and would drag me to it every weekend.

As a young adult, I started working with my uncle at Summit and have been here ever since. A lot has changed over the years — my business partner left in 2013, so it’s just me and my wife now, and the price of nearly everything has gone up.

While we’ve tried different menu options over the years, we still serve the classics like steak and eggs, homemade corned beef hash, and Taylor Ham, egg, and cheese sandwiches. I like to joke that we don’t serve anything healthy here.

We tried fresh fruit, and people didn’t ask for it that much. Fish — we’re not known for something like that, so we’d just be throwing it out. Avocados are one of my pet peeves. I could get them and serve them if I wanted to, but we don’t know how to work with them here, and they go bad fast.

I have nothing against avocados, but I won’t serve them on Summit’s menu.

I don’t know who will take up my legacy

Summit has been in my family for over 60 years, but I’m saddened because it might be nearing the end of the line. I don’t have anyone to hand my legacy down to.

I have kids, but I overeducated them, and they’re not interested in this kind of work. Hopefully, my knees can hold up another five to six years, but my wife also wants to start traveling.

I see a lot of diners in New Jersey closing down or renting out. I worry that if I rent Summit, it won’t be the same. A lot of what’s in this diner is original to when it opened in 1939: the Mahogany wood trim and paneling, the Italian marble countertop, the tile on the floor and walls, and the stools, booths, and booth tables — all of it’s original.

That’s what makes diners important — they’re nostalgic. I don’t intend on rehauling Summit like some other diners have, like Tops. Everything here holds up, and people come here because it’s nostalgic, but this business is getting tougher.

It hasn’t been the same since COVID

Before COVID, we were paying $1 to $1.20 for a dozen eggs. The price shot up to $8.60 and then went back down. Now, we’re paying about $3.75 a dozen.

Even the price of Taylor Ham went up, and pork is one of the cheapest things we can buy. Before COVID, it was under $3 a pound; now we’re paying $5.75 a pound.

As a result, I had to raise my prices after COVID, but they’re still reasonable, I think.

Another thing that’s changed since COVID is our hours. COVID helped me realize that we could still make a decent living without having two shifts.

We used to run our kitchen from 5:30 a.m. to 8:30 p.m., but now we stop cooking at 3:30 p.m. We also ramped up our number of takeout orders and added outdoor seating, which pretty much doubled our seating capacity.

I now only work four days a week, Thursday through Sunday. Other longtime employees run the diner while I’m out. Being in this business is definitely taxing at times, but like I said, I grew up with it, so it never felt unattainable.

I hope American diners can keep going in the future. I mean, that’s what New Jersey is known for; we have more diners than any other state. But I recognize that it’s getting tougher. Hopefully, I can find someone to turn Summit over to.

This story was adapted from Jim Greberis’ interview with Business Insider’s Abby Narishkin for the “Big Business” video series. Learn more about Greberis and the rise and fall of American diners in the video below: