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Juan Jimenez grew up in the restaurant business.
His father is the entrepreneur behind the South Coast’s Cajun Kitchen dynasty, and Jimenez grew up watching his father and helping run the family empire.
Now, Jimenez has a restaurant of his own and with his initials.
Jimenez has opened J.J.’s Diner in the 400 block of State Street in Santa Barbara. The restaurant serves breakfast and lunch from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m.
“I really like the diner vibe,” Jimenez said. “I feel like that’s kind of gone away, so I really like trying to just revive that atmosphere.”
Jimenez first moved to the spot, at 413 State St., more than a year ago, when he opened Onus Donuts. Shortly after, however, the COVID-19 pandemic hit, and the shop took a big hit in the summer months.
He was forced to close the shop and pivot, although it was more of an about-face. He returned to what brought him to the dance: restaurant home-cooking.
Jimenez had a lot of the equipment that was needed, because of his family restaurant business.
“We figured we do a breakfast and lunch diner,” Jimenez said. “It’s what we know how to do. This time, we had the opportunity to slim down the menu and start it small and add stuff as we go.”
He said the restaurant and diner concept, “going into the future, has a better chance of success.”
The 400 block has been cut off a bit from the success of State Street. Cars are still allowed to travel on the block, and much of the foot traffic heads toward the 500 block and beyond.
“We feel like this block could use a breakfast place,” Jimenez said.
The Jimenez family has three Cajun Kitchen locations, two in Goleta and one on Chapala Street. The De la Vina Street location closed during the summer because of COVID-19.
J.J.’s Diner features menu items such as corned beef hash and eggs, Chorizo benedict, California eggs benedict, omelettes, pancakes, churros, apple pie, milkshakes, a kids menu, burgers and a variety of other items.
“I love the service industry,” Jimenez said. “I have been in it my whole life. I appreciate the community. Especially now, everyone is going through something difficult. It makes the simple meals a lot more special.”
Education Content for Families
A new Santa Barbara-based business is offering “edutainment” content for families with children in kindergarten through sixth grade.
Enriched At Home has launched a subscription program offering monthly enrichment kits with entertaining and educational activities for families to complete together in the areas of character development, nature and nutrition.
“What I was searching for was enrichment content with heart,” company founder Tracy Thomas said in a prepared statement. “I wanted to find activities that I could do with my daughter that would strengthen our connection, inspire a love of learning, and help her grow into a self-confident, kind and wise young adult. When I realized that what I was seeking wasn’t available, I decided to create Enriched At Home and develop the content myself.”
She founded the program in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. She homeschools her daughter.
Enriched At Home is a subscription service that delivers monthly enrichment curriculum.
COVID-19 Budget Hit
COVID-19 continues to crush the City of Santa Barbara’s budget.
For the quarter ending Sept. 30, Santa Barbara received $5.9 million in sales tax revenue, a 7% drop from the same quarter the year prior. City staff estimated that the end-of-year sales tax budget will be about 7% lower than projected.
The hotel bed tax was also down. Santa Barbara took in about $1.5 million in transient occupancy taxes for October, about 17.5% lower than the same month the year prior. A city news release, however, noted that transient occupancy tax revenues have been steadily increasing since April.
The city has collected $5.8 million in transient occupancy taxes during the first four months of the city’s fiscal year, which runs from July 1 through June 30. City staff has projected the end-of-year hotel bed tax budget to be about 3% lower than expectations.
— Noozhawk staff writer Joshua Molina can be reached at jmolina@noozhawk.com. Follow Noozhawk on Twitter: @noozhawk, @NoozhawkNews and @NoozhawkBiz. Connect with Noozhawk on Facebook.
