MANSFIELD – The Coney Island Diner was empty Friday morning. The old friends sipping coffee, businessmen polishing off bacon and eggs and young families ordering an early lunch of coney dogs and French fries were nowhere to be found.
The usual hustle-and-bustle of the downtown diner was missing, leaving just the owners, Jim and Cathy Smith, to take it all in one last time.
The Mansfield couple has decided to retire after more than 30 years of running the restaurant. The Smiths are handing over the keys to a new couple who have pledged to continue their legacy.
“It’s an icon in this area,” said Greg Caugherty, who purchased the business with his wife Aubrey. “It’s withstood the times and it’s still here.
“Why not keep this rolling?”
The Smiths said they carefully considered a number of offers, looking for someone who valued what makes the Coney Island Diner so special.
The Coney Island Diner was founded by a Greek immigrant who went by an Americanized name — John George.
George started off selling his famous coney sauce with crackers to factory workers. Around 1919, he opened Coney Island in a small, ten-foot wide building with just a counter and stools, serving a simple menu of coneys, pie and chili.
George moved his business to Coney Island’s current location in 1936, where customers were greeted by a neon sign advertising 5 cent coneys. Following George’s death, a relative and a longtime staff member took over the business. A feud between the two resulted in the opening of a separate entity, The Coney Island Inn on the square, in 1972.
Meanwhile, the original Coney Island has continued its operations. It was purchased by Jim and Cathy Smith in 1992. The Smiths retired on June 30, 2022, leaving the Coney Island Diner to a new family. New owners Greg and Aubrey Caugherty plan to continue running the establishment with the same name, menu and decor.
The Caughertys wanted to keep the menu the same and be involved owners, maintaining the small-town, family-friendly vibe of one of Mansfield’s oldest operating restaurants.
“I think they will do a great job. They’ve got great personalities, they’re very enthusiastic,” Cathy said.
“For a place like this, you have to be visible. People need to see your face. You need to know their names. You need to know what they eat for breakfast every day.”
The Smiths say the new owners remind them a bit of themselves when they started out in the restaurant industry in the 1980s.
After managing other restaurants for a couple of years, the Smiths purchased the Yellow Deli in 1986 and reopened it as Smitty’s Underground. The business flourished for a while, but by the early 1990s, Mansfield’s economic downturn was taking its toll.
Smitty’s customer base shrank as businesses left town.
“Things weren’t bleak, but they weren’t the best,” Jim recalled.
Meanwhile, local investor John Fernyak approached the couple and told them he was going to build a carousel downtown. The prospective site sat diagonal from Coney Island, which was up for sale and at risk of going out of business.
Fernyak asked the Smiths if they were interested in buying the business.
“We came down and we looked at the restaurant, we said ‘There’s no way we’re buying this place,’” Jim recalled. “It had eight-foot ceilings, green paneling on the wall, it was filthy.”
Eventually, the Smiths were convinced to give it a shot. They purchased the Coney Island Diner in 1992, banking on the idea that the controversial new carrousel might work out after all.
It took a year to remodel the space, but the Smiths continued operations, renovating the building one section at a time. They raised the ceilings to their original height, replaced the windows and installed new ductwork. Saturdays, the restaurant closed for cleaning.
“At that time, people didn’t really come down here on the weekends with their families because it wasn’t considered a family district back then,” Cathy explained.
As the Carrousel District took shape, things started to change. Now, Saturdays are the busiest day of the week at the Coney Island Diner – often attracting more business than the rest of the week combined.
In 1996, the Smiths decided to close Smitty’s and focus all their efforts on Coney Island.
“It was the best decision we ever made,” Jim said. “We’ve enjoyed being here and enjoyed being part of the growth of the carrousel district. It’s changed a lot.
“It’s been a hell of a ride.”
Even as downtown began to flourish, the Smiths occasionally encountered challenges. A big one came in 2012, when a four-inch pipe burst on the second floor of the building.
The Smiths woke up in the middle of the night to an alert from the restaurant’s security alarm. Two police officers standing outside informed Jim Smith that they’d seen water gushing through an upstairs window.
Jim opened the front door to a rush of water bubbling out onto Main Street.
“The ceiling completely collapsed. The floorboards completely buckled up because it had been running all night,” he recalled. “The cash register was full of water. We lost everything.”
The restaurant closed for seven weeks while the building was repaired. The Smiths said the kindness and support of customers, who followed the renovation on the restaurant’s Facebook page, kept them going.
Once Coney Island reopened, customers came flooding back — and they brought new decor with them.
“Jim had all these yearbooks from Senior High, back to the early 1900s. They were all ruined, we had to throw everything away,” Cathy recalled. “Customers would bring handfuls of books from their homes and they brought all their pictures. They were so nice.”
Others brought in vintage varsity jackets and cheerleading uniforms and the old trophies that still give the diner an old-school flair. All of the items will be left to the new owners.
Customers have been so faithful that the Smiths decided not to announce their retirement ahead of time, for fear they would run out of food during their last few days at the diner.
Despite efforts to keep their exit quiet, word still got around.
“Those last two days were overwhelming,” Cathy said. “You forget how many regular customers you have because then all these people started coming in. It was great.”
The Smiths say having a restaurant that reflects Mansfield’s history, and has been a part of it, has been especially meaningful. Customers who came in as children are now bringing in their own kids. Elderly customers can recall coming in for coneys long before the Smiths owned the eatery.
“We’ve seen a generation grow up here and it’s been amazing,” Cathy said.
Jim agreed.
“I think every town needs a place like this,” he said.
