‘Now where do we go?’: Classic Calif. restaurant closes for good

“Jesus Christ, I’m so glad I’m getting out of this business,” Puder says under his breath before cracking a smile. 

A regular appears from around the counter, puts down his walking cane and engulfs the restaurateur in a bear hug. Puder’s attempts to pull away, at least for the first 30 seconds, are futile. 

Eventually, he drops his shoulders, lets his arms hang by his side and rides it out.

“I know,” Puder says, as he wipes a tear. “I know.”

The regular’s gesture wasn’t just one of affection on the one day we welcome such displays but one of true sadness. This Coco’s, the northernmost in the Southern California-based chain — and one of a dwindling number — would be closed down for good within the next 24 hours. 

Those who were on hand for one final meal at the spot they’d frequented — and worked at — for the past quarter century since Puder took it over in 1997 were in a mood that was both somber and resigned.

“It’s not just this one place, you know,” said Arroyo Grande resident Bob Fox, 80. “We’ve seen a shift. Little things every day but also massive things. Nothing’s the same. 

“And nothing can last, I know this. But look around you. Places like this, as much as I hate to say it, once they’re gone, they’re gone.”

But it wasn’t nostalgia, Fox said, that drove him to visit the diner nearly every day for the past five years. It was the ability to see people, to interact with them, “to have a little shared experience, a cup of coffee, some conversation — to start the day. Now where do we go?”

Puder, taking a break as the breakfast wave ebbed, joined me in a booth and spoke similarly about what the place meant as he gathered his thoughts. He started his career at a Coco’s near his home in Orange County as a 15-year-old dishwasher in 1971. He worked his way up the restaurant’s ladder first in Anaheim, Costa Mesa and Newport locations, and eventually in the Palm Springs area where he was GM at the Rancho Mirage store. 

“Man those were some days,” he said. “Red Skelton would come in every morning. He’d hold court over his eggs and coffee, sign autographs, and draw little clown caricatures on napkins. 

“Don Drysdale, Willie Mays, Jon Bon Jovi — again, athletes, musicians, actors would all congregate there. But it wasn’t about the fame; it was about people with stories gathering to talk. It was a little breakfast club, I called it.”

In the mid-1990s, Puder, whose brother was a surfer and originally settled in Cayucos in the 1970s, had an opportunity to franchise his own Coco’s on a hillside right off U.S. Highway 101 in Pismo Beach. He said it was a “no-brainer” at the time. 

“You know it’s always been a nice mix of tourists, locals, young people and seniors,” he said. “A few years ago, that started to change. We became less hip. But that’s fine. I turned down the music. I play Sinatra or big band. There’s a mellow vibe. 

“They’re not going to walk in and be blasted out by Led Zeppelin or Aerosmith. This isn’t fast-casual like Panera Bread. You’re going to come here and sit down and relax and enjoy. And you know what? That style of dining, surprisingly, it’s starting to come back a little.”

Indeed, while the clientele on the restaurant’s penultimate morning of service did skew toward an older demographic, several tables of people in their 20s and 30s were looking over the menu, slumping down in the booths and fidgeting with half-empty mini creamer cups. 

It’s a scene that could’ve just as easily been drawn from any time in the past half-century.

“Oh, it’s just a huge loss for us,” Pismo Beach resident Cheryl Jarvis said. Jarvis, dining with her mother, Norma, said they've come to the spot two or three times a week for the past couple of decades. “I just can’t think of what’s going to replace it here. Hopefully not a pizza place or anything — you know, those places with the bright lights and the big tables and the uncomfortable stools.” 

“No, this is nice,” Norma said. “Come in, sit in a comfy booth with views of the hillside — the service is great. The food is lovely, just lovely. 

“I just don’t know where else to go.”

It’s not just Puder’s Coco’s that’s getting shuttered. The chain “is a dying animal,” he says. The restaurant chain started out as a single stopover called the Snack Shop in Corona Del Mar on the Pacific Coast Highway in 1948. By the early 1960s, it had locations throughout Orange County, and ownership had rebranded the bakery-restaurant as Coco’s.

Following several mergers, the restaurant eventually sold to Shari’s Cafe & Pies. Puder estimates a couple of dozen are left. (The Coco’s website lists 21 locations, mostly in the Los Angeles Basin or Orange County, with one in Palm Desert and four in Arizona; the Pismo Beach Coco’s was the farthest north.)

“I’m old and grumpy now,” Puder deadpans. “I’m tired. But it’s going to take a minute to process walking away. For so many years, my staff — most have been with me for 20 plus years, down to my busser — my customers, I brought out my ukulele and sang every birthday, every anniversary. 

“What can I say? It was a hell of a time.”

On their way out, Cheryl and Norma Jarvis pay their bill and linger a moment at the cashier stand. Their server, Lisa Logan, an Orcutt resident who has worked at the Coco’s for nine years, drops an armful of breakfasts to a trio in a booth and rushes over to see her customers out. 

Cheryl hands her a gift bag decorated with hearts. 

“Oh my, you’re going to make me cry, again,” Logan says.

“I love you Lisa,” Cheryl says as she pulls the server in close. “Oh, this is so hard.”