After discovery of former manager’s past, truck stop restaurant changes direction again
.jpg "Newell Travel Center in Newton has gotten new management and a new name for its truck stop restaurant.")
The saga of the longtime truck stop restaurant that closed in Newton in February is not quite over.
The manager hired in September to reopen the restaurant is already out — let go after locals discovered he was a registered sex offender — and the eatery now has a new manager, a new menu and a new name: Newton’s Family Diner.
The former manager, Robert Sowles was hired just last month to run the shuttered Charlie’s, which had operated inside the Newell Travel Center, 200 Manchester Ave., since 1981. He has since been let go, the restaurant’s new manager, Bobbi Santana, said.
The restaurant has long been popular with truckers and served as a gathering spot for Bethel College students, local high schoolers celebrating football victories and Newton families in search of after-church brunch.
Efforts to reach Sowles for comment were not successful.
Business took a hit
Earlier this year, the Houston-based owners of the travel plaza, now branded as a Pilot/Flying J truck stop, put out a plea asking anyone interested in running the travel center’s restaurant to get in touch. The truck drivers who stopped at the plaza wanted to be able to dine there again, the owners said.
In an interview with The Eagle in September, Sowles said he’d moved from Oklahoma to Newton with his wife for a fresh start and that, one day, he stopped by the truck stop and discovered that the owners were interviewing potential managers for the vacant restaurant space. He told them he had experience as a cook, he said, and soon they’d persuaded him to reopen the restaurant himself.
He did so about a month ago, naming the restaurant Rob’s Country Kitchen and offering a menu with all-day breakfast and half-pound burgers.
Not long after the restaurant opened, Internet sleuths in Newton discovered that Sowles was listed on the Kansas Bureau of Investigation’s public offender registry, having been convicted in Oklahoma in 2006 of lewd or indecent proposals/acts to a child. According to court records, he was accused of groping a 12-year-old girl in her cousin’s bedroom in Duncan, Oklahoma, in March of that year. Records also show that Sowles pleaded guilty to the sex crime and was sentenced to 15 years, spending most of that time in prison.
Word began spreading in the community and on social media, Santana said, and business dramatically dropped off. It went from bringing in $3,000 a day to bringing in just $1,000, she said.
“Newton is a very Christian-based, recovery-based community, and they were not going to support somebody that had a background like he did,” Santana said.
The owners, who have not returned calls about the change, let Sowles go and then asked Santana, the restaurant’s lead waitress, to take on managing the place, she said. Santana has a background working in restaurants, she said, including a stint as an assistant manager at a local Wendy’s.
Santana, who has lived in Newton for nine years, said she felt like she understood what the community wanted and could clearly see where the restaurant could be improved. She decided to take on the challenge and immediately instituted some changes, she said, including appointing three lead cooks and lead servers for both the morning and night shifts. She streamlined the menu and renamed the restaurant.
In addition to cutting items from the menu that weren’t selling, she also added ingredients for people with food sensitivities, including vegetarian meats and gluten-free breads. She decided to keep the restaurant’s popular salad bar but is offering it only on weekends until business picks back up, she said.
The menu still includes breakfast items, chicken fried steak and things like catfish and chicken bites.
Santana said she is optimistic that the restaurant can get back on track.
“I think that with the support of Newton and even Wichita, too — when I have the chance to fix what was not going right the first time — I think this place will be a very successful business,” she said.
Santana’s changes were instituted on Monday. She also changed the hours. Newton’s Family Diner is open from 6 a.m. to 2 p.m. and 5 to 9 p.m. Mondays through Fridays; from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m. on Saturdays and from 6 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Sundays.
This story was originally published October 31, 2024 at 2:40 PM.
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