POCATELLO — Boasting the friendliest wait staff in Pocatello is an achievement Jeri’s Jumbo’s Cafe may never have reached when the popular local restaurant was first opened in 1966.

That’s partially because unsuspecting patrons were often pelted with rolls if they complained or gave the owner any lip. But much has changed over the past several decades and for only the third time in the restaurant’s storied history, so has the owner.

At the beginning of this year, Heidi Hunsaker, who has managed Jumbo’s for the past eight years, purchased the restaurant her grandmother, Jeri Pieper, founded almost six decades ago. Hunsaker is taking over for her parents Lisa and Willis Norton, making Jumbo’s (or Jeri’s, depending on the person) a locally owned and operated business for what is now three generations.

“Nothing,” Hunsaker said when asked what she plans to change now that she’s officially the owner. “It’s funny because people didn’t realize that I hadn’t actually owned the restaurant but now I do. Other than that, nothing is changing.”

When whispers of the changing of the guard at Jumbo’s first started circulating, Hunsaker said there were quite a few flummoxed customers.

“Wait, who’s Heidi, is that your sister?” was a common question Hunsaker fielded over the past few weeks.

“I’ve been running Jumbo’s since 2016, so I think that’s why so many people thought I already owned it, because I treated it like I did,” Hunsaker said.

Take, for instance, the fact that Jumbo’s has been named as the local restaurant with the best customer service five times as part of the annual Idaho State Journal Readers’ Choice Awards. That’s an accomplishment that has Hunsaker’s handiwork to thank. It’s also one of the major aspects of restaurant ownership that Hunsaker has seen change over the years.

“Back when Grandma ran it and owned it, she could throw dinner rolls out the window at customers and they'd laugh and think it was a good time,” Hunsaker said. “You can't even talk to somebody the wrong way now, otherwise it’s a one-star Google review.”

She continued, “We have a group of strong, authoritative women and we ran the business with that mindset. But I started realizing the way people wanted to be treated now was different than how I was raised. When you're raised around an environment of Grandma throwing rolls and eggs out the window, you think that that's okay. And it got to the point where people weren't okay with it anymore. So we just had to change how we ran our business.”

To say Hunsaker was raised at Jumbo’s would almost be an understatement. She first started working at the eatery, located at 3122 Pole Line Road, at 12 years old. Her role back then — the dedicated toast maker.

“I went from doing dishes to being the toast girl,” she said. “That’s what it was called. Grandma cooked and I made the toast.”

Several decades later and the staff are still cooking up the exact same recipes Pieper was making while Hunsaker toasted bread. Over everything else, that’s what Hunsaker credits for Jumbo’s becoming a Gate City mainstay. Loyal customers are fully aware that the likelihood of landing a table at the compact restaurant without waiting a few minutes is slim to none.

But what Jumbo’s lacks in size it makes up for in flavor.

“That's the thing — we haven’t changed anything,” Hunsaker said. “This food comes out on plates exactly the way my grandmother did it. We don't cut corners. We haven't found ways to make things faster. We go through about 2,500 pounds of potatoes a week. We boil and peel those potatoes by hand. We’ve never considered replacing them with some frozen, dehydrated hash browns. We're still doing the same portion sizes that were served in the ’60s.”

The same labor of love that’s put into hand peeling as many potatoes as the weight of a Smart car is put into every dish, Hunsaker said, adding that she thinks that’s why Jumbo’s has one of, if not the, best omelet in town.

“We had an 80-year-old guy in here the other day who has been to every state in the country and he told us that was the best omelet he had ever eaten,” Hunsaker said. “We crack every single one of our eggs fresh to order. It’s not some liquid egg mixture and we don’t crack 100 of them into a big bucket at 3 a.m. and let them sit all day. When you order an omelet you can hear each egg crack first.”

Breakfast is the bread and butter of Jumbo’s business. The eatery has won the Readers’ Choice Awards best breakfast category nine times and also been named the best breakfast in East Idaho twice and best breakfast in the state once as part of the Idaho’s Best awards in Boise.

But Hunsaker said a hidden gem at Jumbo’s is the lunch menu.

“Something that people don’t think about for us, though, is our lunch menu — we have a killer lunch menu,” she said. “All of our burgers are half-pound handmade patties, our clubhouse is the biggest and best in town, we have fresh cut fries, and our french dip has piles of meat on it.”

If you were to ask Hunsaker why Jumbo’s has been able to be successful for so many years, she would tell you it’s because she has the hardest-working staff in town and that her customers are as loyal as they come.

“I have the best customers in the world,” she said.

Looking forward to the future, Hunsaker says she’s considered several potential changes. Maybe she looks to add a dinner menu and stay open later than the typical hours of 6 a.m. to 3 p.m. every day. Maybe she considers expanding the current building or relocating to another with more space.

But it could also be that she adheres to the old adage, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” and that it’s business as usual for the foreseeable future. Only time will tell, but if the future shapes out anything like the past six decades, Jeri’s Jumbo’s is sure to be in good hands.