Funi McLoughlin and Matt Finn, co-owners of Gnarly Knots Pretzel Co., are closing their original location in Winfield today — weeks later than first planned so the popular eatery could celebrate National Pretzel Day.
The final chance to grab a triple cheese stuffed pretzel from Gnarly Knots Pretzel Co. in Winfield is today — which also happens to be National Pretzel Day.
“We were actually going to close a couple of weeks earlier,” Funi McLoughlin, who co-owns Gnarly Knots with Matt Finn. “But because of National Pretzel Day, we decided to wait.”
In February, McLoughlin and Finn announced their plans to close Gnarly Knots at 27W570 High Lake Road — a former Winfield house that was more than a century old. The Lombard residents were tired of dealing with a cramped kitchen space and customer complaints of no public washrooms.
Gnarly Knots because an instant hit when it first opened in 2013. The popular Winfield luncheon spot also gained national cable TV recognition via shows on the Travel Channel and Food Network. A franchised Gnarly Knots location in Barrington opened in 2017 but did not survive the COVID-19 pandemic.
McLoughlin and Finn in February revealed their plans to relocate Gnarly Knots to 100 W. St. Charles Road in Lombard.
Since Gnarly Knots is still in the permitting process to build a new kitchen as part of renovating the former coffee house, McLoughlin didn’t have a reopening date ready other than “hopefully summer.”
“We’re really sad to be leaving,” McLoughlin said. “We’ll be about 12,000 pretzels shy of having sold a million pretzels in Winfield over the past nine years, which is extraordinary. We have Winfield to thank for that.”
