Gig Harbor’s Harvester restaurant gets a new tenant and a menu made for breakfast

The Harvester Restaurant was once Gig Harbor’s favorite place for breakfast. Soon, it might be again.

The Gig Harbor investor whose group bought the closed restaurant last July confirmed Monday that he’s signed a lease with The Original Pancake House, a family-owned chain with seven other locations in Washington, including one in Tacoma,

“It’s a perfect fit for Gig Harbor,” said Carl Swanes, a local attorney who put together Gig Harvest LLC to buy the Harvester when its former owner retired. “It’s a breakfast-only restaurant, but it’s still in the tradition of the Harvester, with a great menu and a lot of it made from scratch.”

The lease on the landmark building at 5601 Soundview Dr. was signed last week, Swanes said, and could run as long as 10 years.

“It’s a pretty firm commitment, and they’ve wanted to be in Gig Harbor for a while,” he told The Gateway. “The two owners I worked with are really eager to make a positive impact in the community.”

Opening will be “as soon as possible,” Swanes said, and crews are already working on the building. Supply chain and labor shortages make the actual opening date uncertain, he said.

“They have the keys, and they’re working on it right now,” he said.

The Original Pancake House was founded in Portland in 1953 and built its reputation on a menu that featured international specialties like French crepes, Belgian waffles, Swedish pancakes, German apple pancakes and the “Dutch Baby,” an puffed-up pancake souffle served with powdered sugar and lemon.

The chain is family-owned by successors to the founders, Les Highet and Erma Hueneke, and has about 100 franchises across the country, according to the company’s website. Franchised locations in Washington are Tacoma, Puyallup, Maple Valley, Redmond, Bothel, Kennewick and Richland.

The Gig Harbor location will be managed by BTE Managment Co., the listed principals of which are Blake Williams and Ryan Medford. The company also manages the Tacoma restaurant, at 601 S Pine St., just off Sixth Avenue, opened in 2015.

Neither owner was immediately available.

The Harvest restaurant closed June 30 after nearly four decades. Its longtime owner, Kirby Tweten, then 68, said he decided to close the restaurant after struggling through a year of the coronavirus pandemic. He wanted to retire, he said, and his two sons weren’t interested in the business.

According to state tax records, Swanes’ group, Gig Harvest LLC, bought the property for $1.35 million. Others in his family, some connected with the Northern Fish Co., are among the investors, but he is the principal shareholder, he said.

Swanes, 41, is an attorney who practices in Seattle but considers himself a “Gig Harbor guy,” he told The Gateway in July.

Buying the Harvester was “definitely a leap of faith,” Swanes said this week, especially during the pandemic. It was a cash deal, and the investors committed a lot of capital, he said.

“We were really betting on the strength of Gig Harbor,” he said. “And I think we were proven right.”

The Harvester has been a Gig Harbor landmark for 38 years, known for its American-style comfort food like country fried steak, beer-battered shrimp and six kinds of stacked hamburgers. Breakfasts were hearty — stuffed hash browns, eggs Benedict, corned beef hash, top sirloin, Tex-Mex omelets.

It had a crowd of regulars, including a group of fishermen who showed up for breakfast nearly every morning, said Tweten, who opened the restaurant in 1984. His parents owned the original Harvester in the Stadium District of Tacoma.

Swanes said he and his investor group wanted to continue with that kind of tradition.

“We had a lot of interest” in the property, he said. “But we also did a lot of reaching out. We wanted a nice, family breakfast house, and I knew about the Tacoma restaurant from a brother who attended the University of Puget Sound. It seemed the perfect fit.”

Harvester regulars will find some exotic new menu entries — among them, toasted coconut pancakes, Georgia pecan pancakes and Hawaiian pancakes — but some familiar menu items, too. The Original House of Pancakes menu includes standards like corned beef hash and eggs, pigs in a blanket, and sausage, Canadian bacon or minced ham and eggs.

The new operators were delighted with the building, Swanes said, because it will need very little upgrading.

“The Twetens really kept it in good shape,” he said. “It won’t need much more than a little paint.”

This story was originally published December 28, 2021 at 5:00 AM.