Dole Whip – The Summer Treat is Back

Dole whip.

*relaxing sigh*

It is shocking how amazingly delicious this pineapple flavored treat it. And it is back!!

That’s right, the summer treat loved by almost everyone is back at Patio for a limited time only. I would eat there every day this week just for the dole whip but I probably shouldn’t… you know what? I am a grown adult human who doesn’t need to be confined by anything.

dole whip, blanding utah, where to eat in blanding

I WILL be eating at Patio every day this week just for dole whip. See if you can stop me.

I will save you a seat cause I know you don’t want to miss this. Check out our full menu and make it a meal.

Oh, and did I mention? It only $3. 
And that INCLUDES tax!! Does summertime really get any better?

 

Beat the crowds and order online! 

Employee Spotlight: Lynn Giddings

Another warm welcome to our blog! Today we are spotlighting our wonderful employee and long-time friend, Lynn Giddings! She is a Manager at Patio Diner and has been working here for quite some time now!! She is an important team member at Patio and we are excited for you to get to know her a little better. 

Q: Tell us about yourself! Where did you grow up? What’s your story?

A: I was born in Tooele Utah. But I lived in Montana until I was 16. From there we moved to Colorado, then Idaho, where my parents still live. 

I am the 5th of 7 children with only 2 girls. My older sister is 7 years older than me so I spent most of my time with my brothers; this made me a bit of a tomboy.

We moved to Blanding from Kanab UT to open a restaurant, which didn’t really work out, but we fell so in love with Blanding and it’s people that we had to stay!

Q: What is your favorite thing about working at Patio?

A: I love the people. I love working for Lana, she is a kind and generous person which makes for an amazing boss. My fellow employees are such wonderful hard-working people, they make it fun to be there. Last but not least is our customers! Whether local or traveling through. I enjoy visiting and getting to know them a little better. 

Q: What’s your favorite menu item?

A: I would say as much as I love our sandwiches that it would be the homemade onion rings. I think the fry cooks hate working with me because I always sell a ton of them.

Q: What’s your favorite menu item hack?

A: Just change up the sauce. Try our special sauce for a sweet-spicy kick, or maybe the cattleman’s gold honey mustard for a slight mustardy sweet flavor, but my favorite is probably the garlic parmesan sauce it adds just yumminess to whatever you put it on.

Q: What do you do in your free time?

A: I love to spend time with loved ones, whether with my husband, kids and grandkids (which I currently have 3) or my good friends. I love to travel and hope to see the whole world someday.

Thank you for letting us interview you, Lynn! We are grateful for the hard work and time you put in to Patio to help us improve and continue to succeed!! We wouldn’t want to do it without you!

What are some blog posts you’d like to see? Comment below with your idea ?

The Patio Project: How it started

During the Spring of 2017, Patio owner Lana Arthur, and Sysco Food representative Eric Acton were in one of their weekly meetings when the idea of a walk-in fridge was brought up to help maximize storage for the upcoming summer months. The idea had been floating around for a while now, but this particular meeting was the real game-changer for Lana. They really wanted to be able to keep up with the influx of ice cream orders during the summer months, as the demand grew higher, but did not have to storage capacity to keep up with the amount being sold at that time. She recalls a specific conversation with Eric that happened in roughly May of 2017 when Eric looked at her and said: “You are doing yourself such a disservice by not having the proper storage.” She says for some reason that day it really resonated with her that he was right and that it was time to make the changes needed. As their conversation continued he mentioned how there were other restaurants in the county that had utilized grants to help them with their remodeling projects. He gave Lana Tim Chamberlin’s number, telling her to call him and find out what kind of grants Patio would qualify for.

She gave Tim a call and they set up a meeting. In preparation for the meeting, she had settled on three specific things that she knew needed to be updated. The first was a new roof, the second was to stabilize the foundation, as the northwest corner of the building was collapsing, having already dropped 4-6 inches. And the third was storage space.

When she met with Tim. He referred her to Natalie Randal, whose position for the county is to help small businesses with funding options. They met up at Patio where Natalie gave Lana all the options she had and explained how the grants worked. The two grants that appeared to be the most beneficial for Patio was the Reap grant, which covers bringing your building back up to code and making it energy efficient, and The Fast Track grant, which would help cover the additional storage, but it also required that she double her seating area, meaning that a dining room had to be added to the project, and it was non-negotiable. Lana knew that if she could increase the amount of storage she had, she had to increase the amount of room for customers. She thought of all the customers, especially during the summer months that would come and go when there was not enough seating in the building for everyone. Without much convincing, she knew that it would be the best option moving forward with this project!

When the breadth of the project opened to her, she realized all the things she wanted and had to do. They would have to bring everything up to code, which meant electrical, windows, cooking equipment, etc. Becoming a total reconstruction project. 

She was a bit intimidated by the idea of undertaking such a huge project. Specifically, one day coming home from work, she went straight to her room and knelt down to pray and asked to receive the assurance that this was the right decision. She immediately felt like it was, and that she knew that if she kept moving forward and handled the project in the most Christlike way she could, that it wouldn’t be stopped!

Both grants were in place by the end of November 2017, after hundreds of documents, and hours upon hours of paperwork. After they were in place she was referred to the SBDC by Natalie Randal, to ensure she had all the funding she would need. She started working with Beth McCue from the SBDC in January 2018 and they met together multiple times a week. They decided to go through Zion’s bank for the reconstruction loan, spending hours and hours going through all the required documents for the loan, going through it page by page together. In between meeting with Beth, Lana would go home and do the paperwork she had to do before their next meeting. They had the loan documents done by the end of February after hundreds of hours of work and determination to get it done. At that point, the paperwork was turned in and Lana was told to start working with an architect. She hired her brother in law, Loren Sadler Architect, out of Winslow Arizona. He met with Lana multiple times at Patio and took pictures. They worked very closely together, and he came up with the plans for the project, which they then turned over to the city.

They ran into a lot of obstacles with the city while trying to bring the building to code, as the building was built in the 1950s and it was 2018. Fortunately, one of the huge blessings in all of this, is that Ricky Arthur, Co-Owner of Patio Diner, currently works with Northern Electric, and was hired on pro bono to do the electrical work within the budget. 

After getting the electrical work figured out, she found out that due to the increased amount of seating in the dining area, legally Patio had to have more parking spaces as well. Another huge blessing occurred when Wayne Asbury generously offered Lana a parking easement so that everything could go through. 

While still trying to finalize parking and electrical work, Lana was at a bit of a standstill because she was about $50,000 over budget. During this time she was trying to figure out how to resolve the budget issues when Beth McCue called her out of the blue to see how the project was going. Lana told her about the budget issue stalling the project. Luckily, Beth had just been at a conference in Price, UT, and met a woman whose job was to work with rural businesses on GAP loans, to help bridge the gap between what the bank offered and what you actually needed to complete the project. Beth gave her Lana’s number and within 24 hours she contacted Lana and they were able to move forward, all issues resolved!

The plans were then submitted to Tri Hurst construction, and after multiple meetings, they came up with a plan and solid budget that was within Patio’s needs, it was like their own little miracle. At the end of July 2018, all the paperwork was signed, at that point 1 year and 3 months into the project. Construction started August 18th, 2018.

We are so thankful for all those who helped make this happen, we all witnessed miracles happen to make this work. 

Stay tuned for the second half of our reconstruction tale! We hope you enjoyed reading what it took to begin construction! Lana loves Patio, and the work was worth it!

 

EMPLOYEE SPOTLIGHT: Tyrell Bushyhead

Welcome back to our blog! Today we are doing another Employee Spotlight!! In this post we are highlighting a long time, hard working, full time cook! His name is Tyrell Bushyhead. We are so blessed to have him as part of the patio team. He is a wonderful employee and head cook. We hope you enjoy getting to know another team member at Patio Diner!

Q: Okay so tell us about yourself! Where did you grow up? What’s your story?

A: I was raised in a couple of states but I lived most of my teenage years in Utah. I came to Blanding to attend school!

Q: When did you start working at Patio?

A: I started working at Patio after a couple years of living in town. Fall of 2016 I believe.

Q: What do you like most about working at Patio?

A: My favorite thing would have to be the live music. Whenever I can hear it?

Q: What’s your favorite menu item?

A: Favorite menu item is a Grilled chicken philly with mushrooms.

Q: What’s your favorite menu item hack?

A: I’m not well versed in hacks, but I’ve always wondered why people didn’t just add vegetables to their happy sack burger. I guess it’s not as much food but a tiny burger is worth it!

Q: What’s your favorite memory at patio?

A: My favorite memories would have to be when I see all of us in the middle of a crazy rush but everyone but everyone is working together and getting orders out. It really shows how cohesive of a team we have.

Q: What do you do in your free time?

A: My free time is spent with my family, most of the time it’s just my son and I at home.

Thank you Tyrell for letting us interview you! You are an important member of the Patio Diner team and we appreciate all you do.

What are some blog posts you’d like to see? Comment below with your idea ?

Employee spotlight- Shea Frazier

Welcome back to our blog! We are excited to announce that we will be doing an employee spotlight, interviewing one employee per post, asking questions and hearing about their Patio experiences! Today our employee spotlight goes to the one and only Shea Frazier! He has worked for Patio for over 5 years, and has been a huge asset to our business! We couldn’t have made it through the years without him. He no longer works for us as he recently got married (congratulations!!) to an also former employee, Laura Burke. But because he has been such a huge part of Patio over the years we thought, who better to dedicate our first post too? We hope you enjoy!

Q: What is your favorite memory at Patio?

A: “My favorite memory at Patio, holy cow.. when I tried to catch you from falling and we both fell, (Authors note: I was taking out the garbage and had two garbage sacks attached to my belt loops, I started walking backward while talking to Shea, and I slipped on one of the sacks, he tried to catch me but instead he stepped on the other sack, slipped and we both fell down!) Meeting my future wife, stacking cheese with Courtney, every time Lana walked in I would clap and cheer and she would bow, co-workers, and the regular customers.”

Q: What is your favorite menu item?

A: “My favorite menu item is the Chicken Ham and swiss, and the Houston with green chili.” (Houston no longer on a physical menu but you can ask for it when you are ordering.)

Q: Favorite menu item “hack”?

A: “Secret menu hack would be the chicken quesadilla cooked with special sauce.”

Q: When did you start working at Patio:

A: “November 2010.”

Q: What do you do in your free time?

A: “In my free time you’ll catch me at my house with coworkers playing super smash brothers, call of duty, shredding the guitar, and dropping in at Patio when I’m not on shift.”

Q: How is married life?

A: “The married life is pretty sweet and would highly recommend it.”

Q: What did you like most about working at Patio?

A: “What I liked the most were my bosses and coworkers. Most of the time it was smiles and joy in the kitchen at Patio. The food too, I have to mention the food.” (;

Q: What do you miss the most about Patio?

A: “I miss everything at Patio. There is a reason why I worked there for 5 years. Lana and Ricky were the most wonderful bosses I ever worked for. When I first started there I was struggling with some addiction problems and I truly believe that working there and being around the Patio atmosphere saved my life.”

We hope you have enjoyed reading our interview with Shea! He was an amazing worker and friend here at Patio! We are so thankful to have had him. We are thankful to all our wonderful employees over the years and are excited to be interviewing them in the future! We have a wonderful staff!

What are the questions you have for Patio employees? What would you like to know? Comment and tell us what you’d like to hear!!