A Heartfelt Thank You

After three incredible seasons, Wesley and I have decided that 2026 will be our final season operating Embers at Hillside.

We are grateful to Eric, who helped transform Embers from a simple campground food stand and introduced many of the ideas, including dinner specials, that we were fortunate enough to build upon.

While our role as operators is coming to an end, our gratitude for the people who made this journey possible never will.

First and most importantly, we want to thank our staff.

We have been incredibly fortunate to work with a group of people we genuinely like, respect, and are proud to call our friends. You bought into some of our crazy ideas, tolerated the ones that probably should have stayed ideas, worked through some absolutely insane weekends, and helped us figure things out as we went.

You also understood something that has always been important to us: Embers was supposed to be part of the Hillside experience, not something that kept any of us from enjoying it. Sometimes that meant closing early for an event, changing hours, or deciding that being together and having fun was more important than making a few more dollars.

Thank you for trusting us enough to come along for the ride. Everything we’re proud of at Embers, we accomplished together.

To our customers, thank you. You trusted us with a small part of your vacations, weekends, celebrations, and traditions. Many of you became familiar faces and friends we genuinely looked forward to seeing each week. Your support allowed us to do far more with Embers than we ever imagined when we took over three years ago.

We hope we gave you more than a good meal. We hope some of the memories you made at Embers became part of the memories you’ll carry with you from Hillside.

We would also like to thank Bill, Wayne, and the entire Hillside staff. Operating a seasonal business inside another business requires cooperation from many people, often behind the scenes. We appreciate the opportunity we were given three years ago and the support we’ve received along the way. We wish everyone at Hillside continued success in the years ahead.

For the remainder of this season, nothing changes.

We remain fully committed to providing the same quality, service, and hospitality you’ve come to expect from Embers. We intend to finish this season with the same pride and dedication that has guided us from the very beginning.

We have a lot to be thankful for and a lot of great memories from these past three years. Most of those memories have very little to do with food and everything to do with the people we met along the way.

We still have plenty of the 2026 season left, so we’re not saying goodbye just yet. For now, we’ll simply say thank you. We appreciate all of you who made these three years what they were, and we’re looking forward to enjoying the rest of the season with you.

Shawn & Wesley

P.S. Despite what you may hear, this decision has absolutely nothing to do with the staff’s relentless attempts to unionize. Or onionize. Please don’t rely on rumors. If there are important updates to share, you’ll hear them directly from us.