New owner revitalizes Snack Shack in Key Peninsula Volunteer Park

What’s a baseball game without snacks? Well, still a baseball game but with much grumpier players and fans.

With an eye toward keeping local Little League players and their fans fed and ready to play ball, Rachel Velez has taken over the Snack Shack at Key Peninsula’s Volunteer Park and has turned the spot into a mealtime destination.

“This place has been here forever,” she said. “It’s a perfect fit for me.”

Velez — a Lakebay resident for 16 years — has been running the Snack Shack since March 4 and said she was the first to apply when Key Pen Parks decided to offer the restaurant as a lease. Previously, the Snack Shack had been run by Little League volunteers for the players and their families.

“We thought we’d give it a try for the season to see if we liked it,” Velez said. “And we liked it and we want to keep it open ... we get new customers every single day.”

A family-run business, Velez’s daughter first heard of the lease, and her granddaughter is one of her employees. In fact, Velez obtained a special work permit so should could hire local teenage workers and provide them a steady opportunity.

Restaurant work is familiar to Velez; she spent 13 years as a restaurant manager for Tony Roma’s Steakhouses in Silverdale and Tacoma. In the early 1990s she owned Francisco’s Luncheonette, a restaurant across from the Bremerton Ferry terminal, and in 2008 she owned the 12th Street Diner in Tacoma.

“That was when the economy went down, so we decided to lay off the restaurants for a bit,” she said.

Working in food service is also familiar to Velez’s partner, Blaine Kester. The couple often work at the Snack Shack together.

“What she wants to do is make it a little more of a restaurant with specials,” he said.

Business has been picking up steadily since the end of baseball season, Velez said. Advertising so far has been word-of-mouth and the Key Peninsula community supportive of her venture.

“The community out here is great. When they find out (about us), they’re excited,” she said. “They’re like, ‘Please don’t go. We’ll be regulars.’”

Kester agreed: “There’s nothing out here like this.”

Velez has plans to update the menu — which currently features standard hotdog and hamburger choices — with soup-and-sandwich combos for the lunch crowd. Her six-month lease will be up in August and she plans to renew with Key Pen Parks and the Pierce County Health Department, along with her menu updates.

“We’re not going to change it a whole lot. Just add what people have been asking for,” she said. “It’s always going to be a burger place ... (with) mostly everything homemade that can be homemade.”

Keeping with their baseball origins, Velez said that hotdogs for the local Little League team will remain on the menu.

The Snack Shack is open from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Tuesday to Sunday in Volunteer Park, 5514 Key Peninsula Highway N.

This story was originally published July 18, 2017 at 11:28 PM with the headline "New owner revitalizes Snack Shack in Key Peninsula Volunteer Park."