Kennewick restaurant closes for good. And new cookie shop opening with 120 flavors
As one door closes, another opens. And word on the street is a sweet deal is coming to Tri-Cities.
Crumbl Cookies — a chain that offers an explosion of taste and an increasing reach — has found a home in Richland.
Tri-City native Kevin Hatch and his business partner and friend of 20 years, Ian Taylor, are opening a franchise in the recently closed AT&T store at 2665 Queensgate Blvd.
“The cookies are out of this world,” Hatch told the Herald. “I thought, ‘Oh man, we have to bring these to the Tri-Cities!’ ”
The first Crumbl store opened in 2017 in Logan, Utah, and the company already has nearly 150 locations — including one in Covington that opened in October and another in Puyallup in December.
Hatch, who also is a Richland School District elementary teacher and owns custom Christmas lighting business Deck the Halls Tri-Cities, said they’ve been working on bringing the cookie shop here for about a year but the pandemic put it on hold.
“We are excited to bring it to the community,” he said. “What better way to make someone happy than bring them a box of cookies?”
The cookie company serves two mainstays — milk chocolate chip and a chilled sugar cookie — along with four weekly rotating cookies chosen from among 120 specialty flavors, such as chilled Twix, confetti cake, chocolate crunch and hazelnut churro — a cinnamon cookie stuffed with Nutella.
Crumbl also offers six ice cream flavors that feature cookies. Some include lemon poppyseed, raspberry cheesecake, Buckeye brownie, Biscoff and churro.
Online: crumblcookies.com; Facebook and Instagram.
Closure
The contents of the closed The Old Country Buffet at 6821 W. Canal Drive have been auctioned to the highest bidder.
Although the company’s website listed the location as open, people attending the auction told the Herald the chain was liquidating equipment and all items inside the building including light fixtures.
Auction Nation website shows a half-dozens auctions for former Old Country Buffet restaurants around the country.
The Old Country Buffet said on its website that all locations were temporarily closed during the COVID pandemic.
It also has rebranded as Old Country AYCE (All You Can Eat) Marketplace, where diners order as much as they want from a server in typical restaurant fashion.
It is not the first in Tri-Cities to close. The restaurant’s Columbia Center Boulevard abruptly closed in 2019 and its contents were also auctioned. The chain has filed for bankruptcy several times, with the most recent in 2016.
Email Allison Stormo at astormo@tricityherald.com to share news about your new restaurant, food truck, drinking establishment or other changes.
This story was originally published January 8, 2021 at 5:30 AM.