After nearly 46 years of serving scratch-made breakfasts and homestyle plates out of one of Brown County’s oldest buildings, Hobnob Corner has closed its doors for good. The restaurant served its final meals in early November 2025, following a September 2025 announcement that the property owners would not renew its lease at 17 W. Main St. in downtown Nashville, Indiana.
The closure was confirmed by WTHR, which reported that the decision not to renew the lease brought an end to the beloved diner’s run inside the historic F.P. Taggart Store building. The station’s report notes that the announcement came in September 2025 and that the restaurant’s doors closed for the last time roughly two months later.
Betsy and Warren Cole bought Hobnob Corner in December 1979 from previous owners Bob and Liz Hamilton, running it for nearly 46 years alongside their son, Chef Eric Cole, a graduate of the Culinary Institute of America, according to the Brown County Democrat. Warren Cole had worked in food service while studying law at Indiana University before taking over the restaurant, the paper notes. When the Coles first took the reins, the front room ran a daytime breakfast and lunch kitchen while the back room handled a separate evening pizza operation, according to Our Brown County Magazine. The two kitchens were later unified to focus on scratch-made American home cooking, the magazine’s account adds.
A Final Act of Generosity
Before shutting its doors, Hobnob Corner donated a truckload of surplus food to Mother’s Cupboard Community Kitchen, a local food pantry serving Brown County residents, according to a video posted on Facebook. It was described as the restaurant’s final act of community outreach after decades of serving locals and tourists alike…