Black Label owner says Blair has embraced restaurant as Fremont location struggles

Published 2:07 pm Monday, October 12, 2026

Nearly a year after opening in Blair, Black Label owner Jason Korman says the town’s support has carried the restaurant, while his Fremont location faces possible closure.

“It’s been 11 months. Well, about November 15th last year,” Korman said. “We’ve been in Fremont for four and a half years, so…”

“Fremont is rough right now,” he said. “Everybody over there is having trouble, so… People like their fast food. It’s not fast food. They compare our burgers to fast food burgers price-wise, but not quality-wise.”

Korman said closing the Fremont location is a possibility. “We’re pushing … not to, but we may have to,” he said.

Blair, he said, is doing well. “Good. Could always be a little better, you know, you have your ups and downs. It’s the restaurant industry, so…” Korman said.

Black Label took over a space that had been less busy. “We have new chairs, new booths,” he said. “We do good business, good lunch business, and good dinner business for the most part.”

“I think it’s we have good food, we have good atmosphere, we have decent staff. You know, everybody’s polite,” Korman said. “You know, in Blair, there’s not a lot of, I mean, a ton of options.” Told there are other burger places in town, he said, “But not like ours, I don’t think.”

The wait staff comes from walk-ins. “It’s just from coming in and applications. I mean, let me see. Well, my son works here, Jayden,” Korman said. “Jasmine has been with us since we opened. Jenna’s been with us for four or five months. She’s a Midland student from Fremont.”

“Grace just came in, filled out an application. Aubrey works in the kitchen. He’s from Fremont, actually, as well,” he said. “Wesley, he’s from Blair. Isabelle is gonna be with us part-time for a while. She just moved to Omaha, so she doesn’t know how long she’s gonna stick with us any longer.”

“And we advertise, you know. There’s always a sign on the door, you know, says we’re hiring, so…” Korman said. “I could sit out on the front steps and, you know, ‘Hey, come work for me. Come in the door.’ You know?”

“People are gonna come in if they wanna come in,” he said. “If you have good food and good atmosphere and good staff, they’re gonna keep coming in.”

The shakes, Korman said, are “the hook, if you will.” “My wife likes to think that, tell me that’s why people come in. I said, ‘People come in because we have really good food,’” he said. “They may come in to begin with for the shakes, but the food keeps them coming back.”

The Blair menu has not changed, but Fremont’s has. “We haven’t here yet, but we just changed the menu in Fremont to see if we can get some traction again over there,” Korman said. “Like, we just started doing specials here again. We have three specials on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.”

“We’ve got a few other things that we’re trying out in Fremont right now that we may bring over here as well, so…” he said. “A light lunch menu, if you will, like sliders, wraps, things like that.”

Asked what isn’t working in Blair, Korman said, “You know, I don’t know that there’s anything that’s not working. Friday nights we’re battling with football games…. And Saturdays we battle with the Husker games, you know?”

“People don’t go out to bars, I don’t think, as much anymore to watch the games. People stay home to watch the games or go to their friend’s house to watch the games,” he said. “But that’s, I think that’s industry wide. That’s not just us.”

“And right now, of course, it’s pumpkin patch season, so we’re battling with all the pumpkin patches,” Korman said. “And right now, the economy is, you know, it’s a little tough. People’s dollars aren’t stretching as far as they used to, so…”

What has worked better than expected is “the support from the people here in Blair,” he said. “I thought it would be good five years ago when we opened Fremont. We were gonna come here first, and opportunity came up in Fremont, so that’s why we went there.”

“But the welcoming that the people here have … I mean, if the people didn’t welcome us and didn’t like us, we probably still wouldn’t be open, so…” Korman said. “And over four years in Fremont, we got people from Blair saying, ‘Hey, you should come to Blair. You should come to Blair. You should come to Blair.’ So we came to Blair, and it’s been fantastic so far.”

Winter weather does affect business. “Of course. Because of our location, you know, we don’t have a great big parking lot that people can pull in and park, you know? They gotta park on the street and walk up,” he said. “So that affects all businesses on the main street here, if you will.”

“We opened in the winter last year … I mean, it was good. I mean, we’d just opened, but it was good, so,” Korman said. “We will see. Hopefully it’s good.”

As for why people should visit, the restaurant does not have a theme night yet. “We’ve only been open a year. We haven’t got into, hey, you know, we’re gonna have karaoke or, you know, bingo or anything like that yet. Which we may get to. You never know,” he said.

“But, you know, if you haven’t been here yet, come try our food. We have different things. You know, we have barbecue. We have burgers. We have, you know, your standard bar fried food, if you will,” Korman said. “But we also have some other things like our giant pretzel, you know, stuffed with our smoked meats.”

“It’s not meant to be for one person,” he said. “But take it home, you know, put it in the oven. It warms up really nicely the next day.”

The menu items come from “my wife, Laurel,” Korman said. “Right now she’s spending more time in Fremont, but she’s usually here once a day, every other day.” The couple will mark 27 years of marriage in July.

The restaurant was a long-held idea. “It’s something we talked about for a long time, just because … traveling all over with our son in sports, you know, you’d go to small towns, go to the bars and say, ‘You know, this is a kinda neat bar. We should have a place like this.’ You know?” he said.

Their son attended Logan View, and the family is from “over in the Hooper area,” Korman said. “We live in Elkhorn right now. So I drive here from Elkhorn. But it’s right in the middle of both my restaurants, so…” Originally from Minnesota, he said, “I’d rather it be 10 below than 95.”

Hurdles remain. “Well, there’s always hurdles. I mean, staffing is always a hurdle. I mean, you know, we’re constantly looking for staff, you know?” Korman said. “And, you know, you get people in. Some people work and some people don’t, you know? It’s just the way the whole world is working right now.”

“Hopefully the economy turns around and that’s our biggest thing, ’cause right now it’s the economy,” he said. “We just put a post out in Fremont, you know, … trying to get people, you know, come back to the restaurant, you know, what are their issues? And we’re changing some things. But over half the post was, ‘You know, we just don’t have the money right now.’”

“Money’s tight. I mean, there are some things, you know, put in a drive-through lane, you know, a pick-up lane, stuff like that, you know,” Korman said. “But it’s, ‘Lower your prices. You know, you’re too expensive.’”

“We don’t compare ourselves to McDonald’s and Burger King. You know, yeah, our prices are more expensive than McDonald’s and Burger King,” he said. “We compare ourselves to other places like ours, and our prices are exactly the same as every other restaurant like us.”

“What people don’t understand is, well, they’re selling their burger, fries and pop for $8. Well, yeah, they also have 4,000 restaurants,” Korman said. “They probably buy their hamburger for $1.50 a pound, not $4 a pound, you know?”

Black Label tried local sourcing. “We have three different food suppliers that we get all of our stuff from. It’s the way we can keep our prices where they’re at,” he said. “I mean, we haven’t raised our prices in a year. Fremont, we really haven’t raised our prices in four years, you know, so…”

“Like I keep telling my wife, … any publicity is good publicity. Even if it’s bad publicity, people are still, ‘Oh, well, you know, look at that,’” Korman said. “You know, the really bad publicity’s not good, but, you know, some of it’s okay.”

“Blair has been really, really good. That’s the one thing I want people to understand, you know, that if it wasn’t as good here as it has been, we probably or may not be open still,” he said. “But it’s been fantastic. The support and everything here has been great.”