Bill’s Chicken and Steak House owners sell restaurant

Bill’s Chicken and Steak House, a landmark Vancouver restaurant, has been sold and its longtime family owners expect April 12 to be the restaurant’s last day of business.

The 49-year-old restaurant was sold by brother-and-sister proprietors Jane Wiger, 69, and Alan Teel, 66. Their parents, Bill and Rosemary Teel, opened the family steakhouse in 1965 at 2200 St. Johns Blvd. It has anchored the intersection of St. Johns and Fort Vancouver Way ever since, serving a menu of homestyle cooking — fried chicken, steak and fish.

Teel said the business has struggled for the last five years, as city limits moved farther east, giving way to new commercial development that included a host of new restaurants. Local diners now have more options closer to their neighborhoods, which has meant fewer patrons visit the cozy chicken and steak house with wood-paneled walls, booths and black-and-white photos in frames that tell the eatery’s history.

“At one point, we were centrally located and now we’re a destination,” Teel said. “And there’s so much more competition. That’s it in a nutshell.”

He expects to continue working in the food industry, while Wiger hopes to retire. Each logs about 60 hours every week at the venue, which will be open for lunch and dinner until its final day.

The building and the additional parking lot sold for $475,000 to Ailian Ma, who plans to remodel the 7,700-square-foot venue and reopen it as a Chinese restaurant, said Pam Lindloff, a broker with NAI Norris Beggs & Simpson, who represented the restaurant owners.

A staff of 21 people work for Bill’s Chicken and Steak House, also called Bill’s Chicken Inn. Many of the employees have worked for the family business for decades, said Teel, who has worked at the restaurant since his senior year in high school.

“I’ve been here for 47 years,” he said. Selling the longtime site, he said, is “both bittersweet and a relief that we were able to sell.”