Earlier this year, Kim Farnes and Carl Scanson, the husband and wife owners of Orting’s Around the Corner Café, hatched an essay contest to give away their café. They intended to hand over their business to someone else in order to spend more time with their daughter Kirsty, who will leave home soon and join the Air Force.

The idea was pretty novel: Those interested in winning the restaurant would send a $100 entry fee and write an essay about why they wanted to assume the café that Farnes and Scanson have operated for four years. The couple hoped to get more than 4,000 entries. They intended to use the money to pay off the loan on the building that houses their café, and also would offer the new restaurant operator six months free rent and a bargain on a lease to continue operating the business after that. (click the Read More button to see the story we ran in June about the contest.)

But, it just didn’t work out.

“We didn’t even get close. We got seven entries,” said Farnes. “Had we done this last year, it would have been totally different,” Farnes said. “People are too sketchy right now about taking on a business.”

They closed the contest Dec. 1 and returned the $700 the contest entrants had sent. But Farnes didn’t want that to be the last of it.

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