The Riese Organization extended its 12,500-square-foot hold on Penn Station, where its 1 Penn Plaza food court, closed for renovation since April, reopened last week. With a litany of nationally branded franchises (Pizza Hut, Nathan’s, T.G.I. Friday’s, to list a few) and several self-developed concepts (Lindy’s, Charley O’s) to its name, Riese is the city’s largest restaurant operator, and its neon signage is stamped across high-profile locations from Times Square corners to a recent incursion into Union Square.
At Penn Station, its lineup of national fast-food chains, along with its high-traffic location, secures the food court’s stature as a veritable rite of commuter-passage.
But it’s the food court’s foreign name that’s received the most attention lately: marching onto ground previously occupied by Dunkin Donuts, the Canadian coffee and donut colossus Tim Horton’s has invaded from the North. It began when the New York Post snapped a photo of a mouse nibbling a donut in a Riese-run Dunkin Donuts. One lawsuit and several years of frayed relations later, Riese’s Dunkin Donuts shut its doors and reemerged as Tim Horton’s earlier this summer. The Penn Station Tim Horton’s is the 13th to open its doors to New York City.
