25 years of breakfast

CJ’s Coffee Shop celebrates silver anniversary in RVC

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CJ’s Coffee Shop, which has long been a staple for many villagers in the morning, is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year.

The restaurant is named for Chris and John Lawrence, brothers who decided to go into business together. Chris’s wife, Lori, runs the restaurant with them.

The trio operated another restaurant, also called CJ’s, before opening the Long Beach Road CJ’s in 1990. The previous one was at the corner of Park Avenue and Sunrise Highway. In fact, they have been in the restaurant business in the village since 1979. But the current CJ’s is their longest-running establishment.

It is, first and foremost, a family restaurant. “The first place my parents had, my mom was pregnant with me,” said Jennifer Lindner, Chris and Lori Lawrence’s daughter. “They have pictures of me in the crib behind the counter. I grew up behind the counter.”

Lindner, 34, still works at CJ’s with her parents and hers sister, Loreen. These days, her own daughters — 9-year-old Jackie and 7-year-old Sophia — often help out behind the counter, too.

The restaurant is also known for its peculiar décor: a large tarpon, caught by Chris and John’s father, John, adorns one wall. On another is a bank of clocks showing the times in different cities. All of the times are the same, because all of the cities are on the East Coast.

“It’s all my dad’s sense of humor,” Lindner said. The epitome of that sense of humor is the restaurant’s slogan: If you don’t eat here, we will both starve.

Lindner said that, for the most part, CJ’s, like the community, has changed little over the past two and a half decades, but the clientele has changed. “Families come in. Neighborhood people,” said John Lawrence. “Now we have kids that were little infants, and now they’re coming home from college on break.”

“Everything else in CJ’s has stayed the same,” Lindner said. “The community has stayed the same. But our customers have grown with us.”

The only other thing that has changed, John said, is the food diners order. “Everybody’s so healthy now,” he said. “It used to be everybody ordered bacon and eggs. Now it’s a lot more egg whites. People are more conscious of being healthy. But they still have the bacon.”