"This is like a 'Cheers' bar here," Chase's owner and general manager Dori Franco told ABC7 Los Angeles. "We see lots of regulars. We have lots of family." That line has described the restaurant at 2079 Bonita Ave for years. It no longer describes the whole business. As of this month, Chase's operates a second location in Glendora, and Old Town La Verne is adjusting to a fact it hasn't had to sit with before: its steakhouse belongs to two cities now.
If you live in Old Town La Verne, you already know Chase's without needing an introduction. What you may not know is how recent this expansion actually is, what changed and what didn't, and why a restaurant your family has been going to since before the pandemic deciding to open a twin down the freeway is a different kind of local news than another new restaurant opening on a random block.
The Bonita Ave version is still the original
Chase's has occupied a few different footprints in Old Town over the years. The current location sits in what used to be the University of La Verne bookstore, a detail longtime regulars bring up the way people mention a house's previous owner. The restaurant itself traces back to 2012, when Chris Gendreau and Susan Wickman opened it as, in their own words, a passion project built around food, drink, and the community around them. They eventually handed the business to their longtime general manager, Dori Franco, and her husband Sean, who have kept it running under the same name and the same wood-fired approach ever since.
Nothing about that lineage changed when the Glendora news broke. The Bonita Ave location is still doing what it has always done: bone-in ribeyes and pork chops off the wood grill, a weekend brunch that runs Saturday and Sunday mornings, and a happy hour menu available at the bar Monday and Tuesday from open to close, Wednesday through Saturday from 1 to 5 p.m., and Sunday from 2 to 8 p.m. The live music that regulars plan their week around is still running too. September's lineup alone includes Wanderlust Trio on the 9th, FunkD Martini on the 12th, Brant Cotton on the 23rd, and Time Fighters closing out the month on the 26th, split across the usual Wednesday 7:30 to 10:30 p.m. and Saturday 8:30 to 11:30 p.m. slots. If your Wednesday or Saturday night has revolved around a table at Chase's, none of that calendar moved.
What actually happened this year
The Glendora story started as a rumor with a paper trail. In April, local reporting picked up on an ABC filing and a social media post from Chase's announcing a second location at 216 N. Glendora Ave, in Glendora's Village district. At the time, ownership hadn't set an opening date, and a short video of the space showed what looked like room for both an indoor dining area and a patio, but nothing was confirmed.
That uncertainty has since resolved itself. A Yelp business page for Chase's Glendora Village, updated within the past two weeks, now lists full operating hours and a "Try Our New Menu" note, the kind of listing detail that only shows up once a restaurant is actually seating guests. Between April and now, the rumor became a working restaurant, and it did so quietly enough that Old Town La Verne never had to hold a going away party. Chase's didn't leave. It duplicated.
Why this expansion reads differently than a new restaurant opening
Glendora Village has had a busy year. Two brand-new restaurants, Gabacho and Mama Canela, opened on the same short stretch of Glendora Avenue as Chase's new spot, both within a few doors of 216 N. Glendora Ave. Local coverage of that block has framed Gabacho and Mama Canela as bets on an idea, first-time concepts testing whether the neighborhood wants what they're selling. Chase's isn't testing anything. It already has more than a decade of proof that its formula works in Old Town La Verne. A first-time restaurant opening in a downtown is a hypothesis. An established operator opening a second location in that same downtown is closer to a verdict, one that says the Old Town La Verne version of Chase's generated enough confidence in its own owners to bet on repeating it somewhere else.
That distinction matters if you live here, because it flips the usual worry about a hometown favorite going regional. The concern with any local business expanding is that success elsewhere comes at the original's expense: less attention, a diluted menu, a slow drift toward something less specific to the block it started on. Nothing in the record supports that read here. The Bonita Ave kitchen, the same brunch hours, the same happy hour windows, the same live music booking through September all point to a restaurant treating its first location as the standard, not the pilot.
Two addresses, one name, different roles
| Chase's Old Town La Verne | Chase's Glendora Village | |
|---|---|---|
| Address | 2079 Bonita Ave, La Verne | 216 N. Glendora Ave, Glendora |
| Opened | 2012, in the former University of La Verne bookstore | 2026, confirmed open as of this month |
| Signature draw | Wood-fired steaks, weekend brunch, Wednesday and Saturday live music | New location still finalizing its own identity within the existing menu framework |
| Neighbors | Old Town's mix of specialty shops and long-running restaurants like Café Allegro and Fourth Street Mill | A few doors from Gabacho and Mama Canela on the same Village block |
The table isn't a comparison of which location is better. It's a map of what each one is actually for. Bonita Ave is the version with fourteen years of muscle memory built in, the one where the servers know which regulars want their usual and which nights fill up because of who's playing. Glendora is still writing that history, and its own menu page currently just says it's being updated, which tracks with a restaurant that opened its doors before it finished settling every detail.
Where Chase's fits into the rest of Old Town's calendar
None of this changes the rhythm Old Town La Verne already runs on. The Cool Cruise Car Show still kicks off spring every year on the Saturday before Easter, produced by Flying Deuces and benefiting the La Verne K9 Police Foundation, drawing classic cars and custom builds to the intersection of 3rd and D streets. The Sip of La Verne Wine Walk and La Verne on Tap Beer Walk still run under the Old Town La Verne Business Association, the same group that has been promoting the district's restaurants and shops since forming in 2018. The Holiday Stroll is actually growing this year, with plans for a 3rd Street closure, vendor booths, and a Historical Society presence layered onto the usual tree lighting.
Chase's has always been one of the fixed points on that calendar, the place people end up after the car show or before the wine walk starts. That hasn't changed because a second kitchen opened a few miles away. If anything, the Glendora location gives residents who already treat Chase's as their go-to a second option when they're already out that way, without asking them to give up anything at home.
What to actually do with this
If you already have Chase's in your regular rotation, keep doing exactly what you're doing. The September live music schedule is set, the happy hour windows haven't shifted, and the brunch menu is running its normal Saturday and Sunday hours. If you find yourself in Glendora Village on a night when Gabacho has a wait or Mama Canela's patio is full, you now have a familiar name to fall back on, one that's spent over a decade getting your order right a few miles up the road.
That's really the whole story here. A restaurant that has been synonymous with Old Town La Verne for more than ten years just proved confident enough in what it built to try it somewhere else, without touching what made it worth keeping in the first place.
Shannon Brady Realty keeps a close eye on what's changing in La Verne, from the storefronts on Bonita Ave to the events that fill 3rd Street every season, because knowing a neighborhood this well is what makes the difference when you're ready to buy or sell here. If you're curious what your La Verne home is worth in today's market, reach out and get an instant home valuation.
