Three months ago, Damian McCartney traded his New Orleans chef hat in for one from the Wagon Box Restaurant in Story.
Tuesday, he found out he’ll be looking for a new job.
The Wagon Box Inn, Restaurant and Cabins unexpectedly announced that it’s closing for the winter season this year.
That was a surprise to many of its employees, who told Cowboy State Daily they’d been under the impression the restaurant would remain open for the entire year.
“It’s heartbreaking,” McCartney told Cowboy State Daily on Tuesday. “We’ve got a great group of people here who have worked their butts off. We really care about the place, so the situation is just heart-breaking.”
Alina Gaona, a bartender and waitress for the restaurant, told Cowboy State Daily she’s been coming to the Wagon Box since she was a child and had been really impressed with all the restoration work that the owner has done.
“I was just telling my mom the other night that things were looking good for the winter,” she said. “The whole building looks the best it’s been. And the vision and the crew are as solid as ever. With our new chef here, I thought it was going to be the best winter ever.”
Instead, she, McCartney and other employees thought about their own impending job hunts Tuesday as they watched full kegs of beer, recalled by suppliers, roll back out the door.
“I’ve got a pretty good resume,” McCartney said. “I shouldn’t have too much problem finding something else.”
Troubled Restart
The Wagon Box is a historic fixture of the Story community with a restaurant, RV park and campground nestled next to a babbling brook where RVs and cabins peek out from under tall pines and other trees.
Its reopening last year had a tumultuous start when residents learned that its new owner, Paul McNiel, had proposed setting up a digital timeshare that would own the location.
McNiel told Story residents at a subsequent community meeting that the Wagon Box restoration had become a multimillion dollar project, and that he needed investors to help him continue the work on the place.
He also said that in his vision, none of the essential qualities of the Story community or the historic Wagon Box would change.
To him, a digitally organized time share under a DAO wouldn’t fundamentally change the concept of a campground that’s open to guests from afar as part of its business model. A DAO, or decentralized autonomous organization, is a member-owned community that operates without one owner or entity overseeing the entire business.
“My idea of the whole project is basically that it would be no different in terms of infrastructure than what it’s already designed for,” he said then. “Except, over time, instead of having random people coming off the highway, it would more and more be people who are committed to this kind of, you know, involvement in membership.”
In his vision, that membership might come to the Wagon Box to work on books, or for events where literature or other topics of interest are discussed.
In keeping with that, there’s a library with books, as well as author photographs on the wall, including a particularly prominent one of polar explorer Ernest Shackleton. The restaurant offered an up to 20% discount in Shackleton’s honor during the winter. It was a 1% discount for every degree below zero, as shown by a thermometer on the restaurant’s deck.
The Eustace Conway Discount, meanwhile, offered horseback riders a 10% discount for every day of travel to get to the restaurant. Anyone traveling more than 10 days on horseback could eat for free.
A waitress listens as bar patrons discuss the impending winter closure for the Wagon Box in Story, which has taken both customers and workers by surprise. (Renee Jean, Cowboy State Daily) 
Wagon Box Inn owner Paul McNiel, right, talks with residents of Story and the surrounding area. (Renée Jean, Cowboy State Daily) 
The Wagon Box Inn has been a go-to for Wyoming visitors for more than a century. (Wagon Box Inn via Facebook) 
The wagyu hamburger at the Wagon box with hand-cut fries is delicious. (Renee Jean, Cowboy State Daily) 
The bar at the Wagon Box Restaurant Tuesday afternoon was all but deserted. The restaurant's owner says slow traffic is what's forcing the historic Wagon Box to rethink its winter, and go to a new spring/summer business model. (Renee Jean, Cowboy State Daily) 
Posters of various famous authors hang on the walls art the historic Wagon Box Restaurant in Story. (Renee Jean, Cowboy State Daily) 
A poster of Shackleton on the wall at the Wagon Box Restaurant in Story. The restaurant had been offering a winter discount of 1% per degree below zero, up to 20% off, for those who came to the restaurant during the winter. (Renee Jean, Cowboy State Daily)
Too Much Invested To Fail
Story residents were quick to wonder Tuesday whether the unexpected closure spells trouble for the restaurant.
“Bill Meyers, Mary Gagliardi and others stayed open year-round and did great,” wrote Betty Doenz on the post at the Wagon Box Restaurant’s Facebook page. “Does this mean they are in trouble and may not reopen?”
Others wondered about the fate of employees.
“Disappointing to say the least,” wrote Paula Hutt Morgan. “For your hard-working staff and chef and those who love to enjoy a good meal in Story.”
McNiel told Cowboy State Daily on Tuesday that he had warned McCartney when he hired him that the job could turn into seasonal work if the numbers didn’t make sense come winter.
The Elk Fire didn’t help that situation, McNiel said, but he absolutely plans to reopen in the spring.
“We’ve put in a lot of work,” he said. “I’ve invested way too much in that place to bail. But the thing is, closing for winter, I know what that looks like, but it actually gives us a lot more time and energy to sort of plan summer events.”
McNiel is not ruling out winter events, either, with a guest chef if the weather is amenable. But the restaurant needs to draw from a wider area than just Story to survive in the winter, and he believes few people want to travel 20 or more miles to get somewhere for dinner and a couple of drinks.
“Maybe Wagon Box is just a summer place,” he said. “And a lot of mountain resorts do close for the winter. In fact, in late August, I stopped at a place outside of Cody who told me that was their last week. That got me thinking about it even harder, because we are just cash-flow negative through the winter.”
Renée Jean can be reached at renee@cowboystatedaily.com.
