As the Hanford Sentinel reported, Cristian and Victoria Diaz drive 50 minutes each way from Porterville to run a pizza oven barely big enough for two people. Ten days after they reopened Poor Richard's at 106 W. 7th Street this June, the line still hadn't let up. Victoria works the oven. Cristian works the counter and, more often than not, ends up standing next to someone who hasn't set foot in the place since the Reagan administration.
"We spent the last four years waiting to come to Hanford, waiting for the right spot," Cristian told the Hanford Sentinel after the reopening. The pizzeria had been gone from town for more than 30 years. The Diazes bought the name and the recipes in 2020 and finally found their building this year.
That building used to be Hop Forged Brewing Company.
Hop Forged closed this spring after nearly seven years, one of the few breweries left in the region and, by most accounts, a genuine downtown gathering spot. A regular named Jeff Pfaff, interviewed by KMPH the week the taps went dry, put it bluntly: "If we don't go here, where do we go?" Two other downtown restaurants, Quesadilla Gorilla and Fatte Albert's Pizza, closed around the same stretch of months.
So the same spring that took three restaurants off downtown Hanford's map also handed one of them back, in the same building, to a family that had been trying to get in for four years. That's not a coincidence worth shrugging off. It's the clearest evidence yet that Hanford's dining scene isn't shrinking or growing so much as it's splitting into two different economies that happen to occupy the same zip code.
Every New Chain Is Aiming for the Same Corridor
While downtown was losing storefronts, three national chains confirmed plans to open in Hanford for the first time, and every one of them picked a spot within a few blocks of 12th Avenue.
| Restaurant | Location | Status as of mid-2026 |
|---|---|---|
| Olive Garden | 12th Avenue and Mall Drive | Confirmed, opening date not yet set |
| Ono Hawaiian BBQ | 12th Avenue and Glendale Avenue | Confirmed, first Kings County location |
| Robertito's Taco Shops | 436 S. 11th Avenue | Confirmed, opening date not yet set |
| Kabab City | 240 N. 12th Avenue | Open since spring, sixth Central Valley location |
Olive Garden's first Kings County location is going into a new 6.5-acre shopping center at 12th and Mall Drive, developed by broker Chris Ajluni of Marcus and Millichap on land owned by the Tachi Yokut Tribe. Chick-fil-A has also signed on as a tenant there, according to the Hanford Sentinel's reporting on the project. Ono Hawaiian BBQ, known for Hawaiian-inspired plate lunches over steamed vegetables with rice and macaroni salad, will open its first Kings County spot four blocks away at 12th and Glendale. Robertito's, a 24-hour Mexican chain recognized for carne asada fries and its signature RTS tacos, already runs 17 locations across California, including Kingsburg, Kerman, Fresno and Clovis, and is adding 11th Avenue, one street over from 12th, to that list.
Kabab City already made the move. It opened this spring in the old Dickey's BBQ space at 240 N. 12th Avenue, its sixth Central Valley restaurant after two locations in Fresno plus Fowler, Reedley and Merced. Tony Yanni, who runs the Merced location, came in to help launch it and told YourCentralValley.com the appeal of a town like Hanford is that "you get to know the customers a lot more."
None of these four are downtown. All four sit within a few blocks of each other along 12th Avenue. If you're mapping where Hanford's next few years of dinner options are landing, that corridor is where the pin drops, not 7th Street.
Thursday Night Foot Traffic Downtown
Here's what makes that split more interesting than a simple downtown-versus-strip-mall story: downtown has a recurring draw that operates on a different rhythm.
The Thursday Night Market Place returned to Civic Park on May 7 for its 26th season, and it's still running every Thursday through October 29, which means it's in full swing right now. This year Main Street Hanford received over 260 vendor applications and could only approve 150, which the organization says makes this one of the biggest seasons the market has seen, according to the Hanford Sentinel. Last season the market pulled in 174,000 visitors total, with 10,000 people showing up on opening night alone, making it the largest weekly market in the Central Valley. BarrelHouse Brewing is moving into the newly renovated Old Courthouse building that borders the park, and its beer will anchor the market's garden alongside sponsors that include Valley Wide Beverage, Tachi Palace Resort and Casino, and Family Healthcare Network.
Michelle Brown, Main Street Hanford's executive director, has been direct about why the market matters as much as it does. "Since Hanford doesn't have many dining options, Thursday nights are a chance for people to try something different," she told the Hanford Sentinel ahead of this season's opening. Her comments point to the market's role in bringing visitors downtown.
Brown has also highlighted the range of activity downtown. "There's so much attention on the businesses that are closing," she told the Hanford Sentinel, adding that people don't always notice "so many businesses opening" at the same time. Main Street has run ten ribbon cuttings and grand openings over the past year, a role it picked up after Hanford's Chamber of Commerce shut down, per the same report. Alongside the closures, business openings and the weekly market are part of downtown's current activity.
What the Split Actually Means for How Hanford Eats
Put the two halves of this together and a pattern emerges that no single headline captures on its own. Hanford isn't choosing between chains and local restaurants, or between downtown and the mall corridor. It's building two separate dining habits at the same time, and they don't compete with each other because they don't serve the same need.
The 12th Avenue corridor is where you go on a random Tuesday when you want something fast, familiar, and open at 9 p.m. Four chains betting on that corridor at once, three of them opening their first Kings County location ever, tells you the daily-dinner math now works in a town this size.
Downtown is a different transaction entirely. It's where a family drives nearly two hours round trip to keep the original recipes going in the building that formerly housed Hop Forged Brewing. It's where a single Thursday opening night pulled 10,000 people into Civic Park for produce, funnel cakes, and a band playing under the Old Courthouse.
If you live in Hanford, the Thursday Night Market Place is one way to experience downtown. This season's 150 approved vendors show the scale of the market.
Sean Harper has spent 18 years watching towns like Hanford change one block and one grand opening at a time, and he pays attention to what a shifting local economy actually means for the people living in it. If you're curious about what any of this looks like for a specific property or a specific corner of Kings County, Sean Harper is a straightforward call away. Let's Connect.
