Linda's Soda Bar and Grill, the 1950s-themed diner on downtown Yuba City's Plumas Street, served its last plates on Sunday. Owner Lori Pack, who started as a waitress there nearly 30 years ago before taking over the business, says rising food, fuel and other operating costs made it too difficult to keep the doors open.
Pack bought the diner and its extensive collection of retro memorabilia for roughly $900,000 in 2021, according to Territorial Dispatch. Like Pack, her predecessor Linda McKenna had started as a waitress there before buying the restaurant around 1999. As reported by CBS News, Pack said she wanted customers to feel at home whenever they walked through the door.
A Landmark With Roots Back to the 1930s
The building at 668 Plumas Street had operated in some form since at least the 1930s or 1940s, first as a pinball business before becoming a soda bar and ice cream shop, per the CBS News report. Over the years it grew into the kind of place regulars considered a second living room, filled with black-and-white checkered floors, bright yellow booths, a vintage cash register, and walls covered in local history photos, military trinkets, and customer-donated memorabilia, according to the Territorial Dispatch's account.
Patricia Dickens, who visited the diner as a child with her parents, is among the longtime customers now mourning its closure. Pack told CBS News that customers have expressed worry about where they'll see their friends now that the gathering spot is gone.
National Attention During Pandemic-Era Defiance
Linda's drew national news coverage in 2020 when customers ate indoors despite California restrictions prohibiting indoor restaurant dining, according to KTVU FOX 2. Yuba City's mayor said the restrictions were enforceable by the state. Patrons at the time gathered there specifically to show support for independent local businesses amid the statewide shutdown orders.
Rising Costs Squeeze a Wider Circle of Restaurants
Pack said higher food, fuel and other operating expenses ultimately forced her hand, the same CBS News report notes. California's statewide minimum wage climbed to $16.90 per hour on January 1, after rising from $16.00 in 2024 to $16.50 in 2025, according to the California Department of Industrial Relations, which adjusts the rate annually based on the Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers (CPI-W).
After Pack canceled the restaurant's sanitation contract because of the shutdown, the service provider told her that Linda's was the eighth local restaurant client to drop the contract in recent months, per pack's account to CBS News. John Kabateck, California state director for the National Federation of Independent Business, said closures of longtime family-owned restaurants can ripple through the communities that depend on them.
What Happens to the Space Next
Plumas Street runs directly through the Yuba City Town Center and hosts major civic gatherings including the annual Summer Stroll, Christmas Stroll, and Certified Farmers' Market, making the diner's spot one of downtown's most visible addresses. Pack is now reaching out to return the antiques and other donated items that filled the restaurant's walls back to their original owners.
She's also looking for someone to buy the business outright. Pack has said she does not care how much money she receives for the restaurant, so long as it continues on as something — and she hopes the space can keep serving as a community gathering place, whatever form it eventually takes.
