A three-generation family is bringing new life to a downtown Menlo business.

The Menlo Café has reopened this week after its doors were closed last July when the former manager retired after 18 years of operation, in a space which at one time was a grocery store. It was the perfect opportunity for Amy Hale’s family, as her parents Tim and Linda Judkins recently moved to Adair, and saw an ad for the business. The family all decided they wanted to manage the restaurant, which is owned by the Menlo Corporation.

Neither the Ludkins nor Hale and her husband Scott and daughter Morgan are from Guthrie County, but they’ve quickly been enmeshed with the Menlo community as Morgan comments, “I love it. We’ve always wanted to be in a small town just because bigger towns are not us. And then we’ve always wanted to run a bakery, and then it turned into, ‘Oh, we want to do a café kind of thing,’ and then this came up and we were like, ‘Okay, we’re doing it.’”

The reopening of the Menlo Café has seen an outpouring of community support as the Menlo Corporation replaced the flooring and installed new kitchen equipment, and community members have donated their time and money. The Hale-Ludkins family hosted a dinner Saturday to thank all those involved.

Fresh ground beef hamburgers, pork tenderloins, ham balls, and ice cream treats are just some of what’s on the homestyle food menu. The Menlo Café will be open Tuesday through Saturday from 6 a.m.-2 p.m. with a buffet on Sunday from 11 a.m. to 1:30 p.m.