O'Hare's struggling to stay open ahead of 30th anniversary

RIO RANCHO — A beloved Rio Rancho restaurant is weighing its Irish luck right now as permanent closure looms.

O’Hare’s Grille and Pub owners Heather and Jason Armstrong hope to celebrate 30 years in March, but if they don’t see a consistent 30% increase in customers by the end of the year, they feel the situation is dire enough for them to close for good before they can even reach the three-decade mark.

“We have come to a point in the restaurant where we’ve seen a reduction in customers and our costs have been increased year after year,” Heather said in a Sept. 3 interview.

The largest impact by the drop in customers is felt by staff, according to the Armstrongs. Heather stated that they have seen ups and downs since acquiring ownership in 2017, but nothing quite this bad. She said there is much that owners don’t have control over in the restaurant industry.

“Labor is one of the ones that we can usually have a little bit of control over. But with the amount of money that is now required to keep employees happy, it’s become a cost that’s just really very expensive for our restaurant. And that is only controlled by the amount of customers that we can get through the doors,” she said.

It’s not just about “breaking even” either, according to Heather. She said there has to be enough for the restaurant to profit as well.

Jason, who is the “feet on the ground” when it comes to the ownership of O’Hare’s, detailed some of the restaurants struggles.

“Back in 2018 when they ripped up Southern (Boulevard) and redid Southern, it was very hard to get here. And then pieces of the Rio Rancho shopping center started getting sold off,” he said.

As new businesses were being built, like the gas station and Popeye’s, the visibility of O’Hare’s essentially disappeared, he said. He also recalled when the gas station did its survey and drilled, they allegedly hit a power line that knocked out power to all businesses on the corner there. Another impactful event was Samon’s Electric and Plumbing Supply closing, the Armstrongs said.

“It has lived a whole life the past eight years,” Heather said.

O’Hare’s used to host events and special nights but stopped doing so because of the environment.

“We used to have a car meet with a giant parking lot, and we got pictures of maybe 100 cars would show up. There’s a lot of car enthusiasts in Rio Rancho,” Jason said.

Heather also said she thinks people have just gotten the impression that the whole strip is “dying.”

“Nothing ever came back through and brought life back to the space. It was always just the existing places that were here. So it was us, the Allstate, and that was really it for a while and once they took the laundromat out, then people really thought, ‘Oh, this is all getting torn down,’” she said.

However, Heather added, new life is making its way into the strip again, referring to a church and help center that recently moved in. She also said part of the building where the laundromat used to be is being sold.

“We’re not quite sure what that’s going to become,” she said.

In a lot of ways, O’Hare’s just feels “forgotten”, according to Heather.

After the Armstrongs took to social media last month, sharing their struggles, the community showed a tremendous amount of support, they said.

“We’ve gotten so much positive feedback since we kind of put out the call to the community that we were struggling, and that’s been huge. The feedback is great. It sounds on paper like people love us, which is awesome, but we are still a little bit struggling with seeing the people come through the doors,” Heather said.

However, the Armstrongs are fighting to stay open despite having had the conversation about closing. The couple said some changes to help the situation are streamlining the menu to a simpler selection, building social media presence and tuning into what the customers want from O’Hare’s. They are looking at signage changes and other promotion changes as well. One way the restaurant will see its largest change is by utilizing Door Dash, a food delivery service, to get O’Hare’s food out to the community, according to Jason.

They have also been working with Rio Rancho Mayor Gregg Hull, the incoming Rio Rancho hockey team and other restaurants such as Turtle Mountain to figure out how they can push through.

The Armstrongs feel that O’Hare’s is their “third child” and that the staff have become family to them. Closing would be devastating for them, they said.

“We’ve always kind of depended on word of mouth and just that we’ve been here forever to kind of get us out there, and we realized that that’s no longer working,” Heather added. “And so we’re really just trying to make it through this tough time and hopefully survive because we don’t want to just disappear. We want this place has been here for so long, and we don’t feel like it’s ready to be over.”

She asks that the public put local restaurants, not just O’Hare’s, “on their regular rotation” again.

For more information visit oharesgrillepub.com or the O’Hare’s social media pages.