Quarters BBQ has closed after 52 years in business, KRQE reported.

“COVID has hurt us tremendously," owner Constantine Nellos told the station. "The labor market has hurt us tremendously. And the politicians have hurt us – nobody’s even come in and applied for a job. Nobody, not one person.” 

Nellos opened the restaurant in 1970 after getting a friend to work as a chef, the story said.

After COVID, Nellos said running the restaurant was not feasible due to rising employee wages, which he couldn’t meet without raising menu prices.

Old employees and family showed up on the last day of business and Quarters sold out of food.

"It hit Facebook," Nellos said. "All of a sudden, all of the old girls who used to work here showed up. The whole family showed up. This whole side was full of people who worked with me over the years. It was a bittersweet goodbye that couldn’t have gone better."

Nellos plans to keep the bar open for whatever restaurant decides to take the restaurant space, KRQE said.

“It hurts me to get out because I had so many good customers,”  Nellos told the station. “I have no other choice at this point for what I’m going to do."

Nellos is now 82 years old.

“Someone young has to come in and do it – someone young that’s got the vim and vigor that I used to have," he said to KRQE. "I have the vigor but I don’t have the vim.”