Day By Day Cafe Celebrates 50 years

In November 1973, Greg Ekbom got sober. He graduated from a treatment center and was looking for what to do with his life. 

According to his Daughter, Gena Ekbom, that led to the treatment facility helping pay for him to go to culinary school. Greg went on to work in the facility’s cafeteria before opening his own restaurant, Day By Day Cafe, at 603 West 7th St., the current site of Tory Ramen, in 1975.

Now, 50 years later, three generations of the Ekbom family are involved in what has become a neighborhood institution.

These days, Greg is mostly retired and his kids, John and Gena Ekbom, run the restaurant. 

And Gena’s daughter is working there as a server.

“She was like, um, I’m never going to be a server. I don’t want to do it,” Gena said. “I trained her and now, every day she’s like, ‘can I work?’”

Greg’s original vision for the restaurant was a place to serve the recovery community, largely hiring people in recovery and hosting recovery meetings until “they got too big,” Ekbom said in November of 2023. The name even comes from the recovery tenant of taking life day by day.

Those values are still held by John and Gena. While they do not explicitly hire from the recovery community anymore, they are still a place for those in recovery to turn for jobs and support.

“We seem to hire a lot of people in recovery,” John said.

“Yeah, we have a handful right now,” Gena added. “I typically, if I’m doing interviews and they’re equally qualified, and one person’s in recovery and one person’s not, I’ll lean towards the recovery person.”

Gena and John both grew up around the restaurant, at their first location and the current spot at 477 West 7th St, which Greg bought, according to Gena, as an investment opportunity.

“He bought this building just to invest in properties. It was a Mexican grocery store slash restaurant,” Gena said. “They were going to go out of business. We were there for five years and then moved here.”

They’ve been in the same building since 1980, expanding significantly on the original storefront.

“It started with just this room,” Gena said, referring to the small space when you first enter the restaurant. “Then he bought this building next to it and combined them. He built the library in ‘96.”

The renowned patio came shortly thereafter, with a pizza room added during the COVID pandemic.

“I do remember as a little kid, the office was above the bathrooms here. And I thought that was really cool, that like, overlooked the restaurant,” John added. “I was very young, but that was pretty cool.”

According to John and Gena, despite some lean years during COVID and rising food costs, the business is thriving.

“The last two years have been really, really good,” John said. “Record year-over-year.”

Gena hopes that success carries on for the next 50 years.

“I was taking a shower yesterday and I was like, I probably won’t make it to the 100th year just because of my age,” She said. “So my kids will be doing this if they stay in the business 50 years from now. I know it’s possible.”

Celebrating 50 years

To celebrate 50 years, Day By Day Cafe is throwing back coffee prices on March 17, St. Patrick’s Day, all day. Stop by and support the long running restaurant and share your congratulations.

Day By Day Cafe

477 West 7th St., St Paul, MN 55102

Open every day 7:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m.