Fans swarm Kansas City area restaurant as it prepares for final day after 42 years
It was nearly closing time at the Mill Inn Restaurant, but the parking lot was still packed, the staff still hustling, the tables still full of customers munching on pork tenderloins and pan-fried chicken, the Wednesday special.
Owner Evelyn Cowsert — 89 years old, with a shock of short white hair and an embroidered denim jumper over a bright yellow blouse — had been on her feet more or less nonstop since the Excelsior Springs restaurant opened for business at 6 a.m. As the clock on the wall inched closer to 2 in the afternoon, her 93-year-old employee Roberta O’Dell encouraged Cowsert to take a load off.
“I didn’t anticipate anything like this,” Cowswert said, grabbing a seat at one of the few available tables. “We’ve been absolutely stuffed with people all day. It’s been wonderful. But I’ll need to add a little more help, I suppose.”
Just for a day or two, though. The Mill Inn, a homestyle restaurant Cowsert has owned since 1981, is closing for good Friday.
“I’ll be 90 years old next month,” Cowsert said, “and I’ve been working six, sometimes seven days a week. I’m just not capable of doing it for another year. It was just time to retire.”
Cowsert’s history with the Mill Inn actually goes back farther than 1981. She and her husband, Orville, bought the property at 415 St. Louis Ave. in 1965. Back then it was a Conoco service station. The station closed the next year due to low sales, and the Cowserts leased it out to a restaurant called the Mill Inn. It operated successfully for the next 10 years. After it closed, a few restaurant tenants came and went in short order.
“So in 1981, my husband said, ‘Let’s take this place on as our own restaurant for six months and see what’s wrong with it,’” Cowsert recalled. “And here we are, it’s been more than 40 years now. He’s gone — he passed away 20 years ago — and I’m still plugging away. Orville was a salesman. I should have known better than to take a six-month deal from him.”
Business boomed in the 1980s. “That was before all the fast-food franchises went in on the west side of town,” Cowsert said.
The Mill Inn also benefited — still does — from guests at The Elms Hotel & Spa, the historic edifice just around the corner.
“The hotel has been a great neighbor,” she said. “We get a lot of breakfast business on the weekends from people who stay there and want to get out locally and do something.”
The restaurant used to stay open for dinner, but it narrowed its hours during the pandemic to just breakfast and lunch. Cowsert said she plans to sell the building, ideally to someone who will keep it a family-style restaurant.
“There aren’t many places like this around anymore,” she said. “I think it’s important for our community in Excelsior Springs to have a place like this. So, I’m hoping to find a buyer locally who will keep it similar to this.”
As for Cowsert, she said she plans to spend more time on her 120-acre farm, which straddles the city-limit line. Until a few years ago, she raised Angus cattle there, and she’s looking forward to “tending to my farm, my yard, the flower beds, my house.”
“I’ve been telling everyone I’ll sit out on my front porch and swing, but they know me better than that,” she said. “They know I’ll be working.”
