What Kootenai County eats: 378 places, mostly local, and the food we're missing

Kootenai County has about 378 places to grab a meal, a coffee or a cone, by our count of the public map data. Seven in 10 of them are independent. The county runs on coffee, burgers, pizza and Mexican food, and some of the world's big cuisines are hard to find here at all.

We counted every restaurant, fast food spot, cafe, coffee stand and ice cream shop on OpenStreetMap, the free public map, inside Kootenai County. We left out the 30 food stands inside Silverwood, and we counted the 40 bars and brewpubs separately. Then we sorted each place by type and by who is behind it.

How many are local

About 259 of the 378 places, or 69%, are independent or a local brand with a few locations, like Jitterz, Paul Bunyan or Capone's. About 119, or 31%, carry a national or regional chain brand, like Starbucks, McDonald's or Westside Pizza.

One caution about that split. A chain brand is not always out-of-town money. Plenty of fast food here is run by local franchise owners. What we can measure is the name on the sign.

The map tells the story. Chains cluster along the big commuter roads: Appleway and Ramsey in Coeur d'Alene, Government Way through Hayden, Highway 41 and the Pointe in Post Falls. Downtown Coeur d'Alene on Sherman Avenue is almost all independent.

What we eat

Coffee wins, by a lot. We counted about 92 coffee shops and espresso stands, and about 73 of them are independent. After coffee come burgers (about 47 places), pizza (33) and Mexican (31).

Some types are almost all chain. About 30 of the 47 burger places, 20 of the 33 pizza places and 14 of the 23 sandwich shops carry a chain brand. Others are almost all local. All 10 Japanese and sushi places we found are independent, and so are the Thai, Vietnamese and Indian ones.

Who lives here

Kootenai County is about 86% white and not Hispanic, according to the Census Bureau's survey. About 6% of residents, roughly 10,300 people, are Hispanic or Latino. About 6% identify with two or more races. Fewer than 1% are Asian, fewer than 1% are American Indian, and fewer than 1% are Black. Nationally, about 57% of people are white and not Hispanic, and about 19% are Hispanic or Latino.

Asked about their family roots, residents most often name German (about 22%), English (about 17%) and Irish (about 12%) ancestry, followed by Italian and Norwegian. People can name more than one.

What the market is missing

The gaps are easy to spot. On the map we found only three Indian restaurants and four Thai or Vietnamese places for a county of 182,000. The closest thing to Middle Eastern food is on Spokane Street in Post Falls. Turkish-born chef Raci Erdem opened The White House Grill there in 1996, with a Mediterranean menu that leans on his roots: kofte, kebobs, souvlaki, gyros, baklava and a lot of garlic. Down the street, his Oval Office Bistro & Martini Bar serves American bistro food with flashes of the same Mediterranean flair. It reopened in a bigger building in 2024. Beyond those two and the Greek gyro spots, we found no Lebanese, Persian or falafel shop on the map or in the online listings we checked. We found no Filipino, Caribbean, African or Peruvian restaurant.

Korean food is rare too. The one Korean spot we confirmed, Young Shin's, serves from the Prairie Pavilion food truck court in Coeur d'Alene, according to its online ordering page. A Brazilian grill, Boiada, shows up in delivery listings.

There is also an irony in the ancestry numbers. More than 1 in 5 residents claims German roots, but the German food we found comes down to a bier haus downtown and an Old European breakfast spot in Post Falls.

How many fail, and why

The famous line that 90% of restaurants fail in their first year is a myth. A study of 2,439 restaurants in Columbus, Ohio, by H.G. Parsa of Ohio State University found about 26% closed in their first year, 19% in the second and 14% in the third. About 59% were gone within three years. Chains did only a little better than independents, 57% to 61%.

Parsa also found that many closings were not about money. Owners pointed to divorce, health or simply wanting to retire, and every owner he interviewed talked about the hours.

The local record fits that picture. On Appleway in Coeur d'Alene, a Chipotle, a Taco Time, a Dairy Queen and a Burger King all closed within about a year of each other, KREM reported. The Taco Time owners retired, and their location was still making money, the realtor listing the building told KREM.

Other closings had other causes:

Competition. When Golden Corral closed its Coeur d'Alene buffet, the owner said it was not popular enough to compete with other businesses in town, KXLY reported.

Family. Ten/6, a brunch spot named to Yelp's list of America's top 100 restaurants, closed its original 4th Street location in 2020 citing family circumstances, KXLY reported; it has since reopened at a new location on Government Way.

Liquor rules. The Cellar, a downtown mainstay for more than two decades, closed after its new owner could not get a state liquor license and could sell only beer and wine. He estimated the missing hard liquor cost him about $300,000 a year, KREM reported.

Fire. The Wolf Lodge Steakhouse, a landmark east of Coeur d'Alene, burned on Labor Day 2024, the Coeur d'Alene Press reported.

Location. When Denny's announced in 2024 that it would close about 150 of its weakest restaurants nationwide, an executive said some had simply ended up in places that were no longer good locations, the Coeur d'Alene Press reported.

What food trucks add

Food trucks fill some of the holes. In Kootenai County they are licensed by the Panhandle Health District, and they gather in a few places. Prairie Pavilion on Heartland Drive in Coeur d'Alene was built with room for 13 trucks, with water, sewer and grease hookups and a restroom, the Inlander reported. The Best Avenue Food Court in Coeur d'Alene has hosted several more. In Post Falls, the Post Falls Pavilion on Horsehaven Avenue was set up for 15 food trucks plus four vendors in an enclosed food court, KREM reported; it now lists 19 vendors, and Post Falls Brewing hosts trucks during the week.

The trucks bring food the brick-and-mortar list is short on. The Inlander's roundup of North Idaho trucks found Japanese curry, smoked meats, and vegan, keto and paleo meals at Prairie Pavilion; the Korean barbecue and Thai trucks it listed are in Sandpoint. One owner told the Inlander the draw is a lower start-up cost, lower overhead and the ability to move to where the customers are.

Where a new restaurant could do well

No count can promise a restaurant will make it. But the numbers point to a few places with more people than places to eat.

Post Falls has roughly 500 residents for every food place we counted, and Rathdrum about the same. Coeur d'Alene has about 315, and Hayden about 237. Hayden and Coeur d'Alene also feed shoppers and visitors from all over, so their numbers run lower. Still, the gap is wide.

North Post Falls and the Prairie. The owners of Prairie Pavilion chose a spot near Coeur d'Alene's border with Hayden and Post Falls because of the housing developments going up around it, they told the Inlander. Post Falls has the most residents per food place of the cities we measured.

Rathdrum. It has the biggest share of households with kids of any city we cover, about 1 in 3, and only 22 food places on the map, six of them chains. Family sit-down food is thin.

Downtown Coeur d'Alene. It has the densest cluster of independents in the county, and it draws visitors. The catch is the cost of getting in, including, for a full bar, a state liquor license.

And what to serve? The gaps above are the opening: Middle Eastern, Korean, Filipino, Caribbean, South American, more Indian and Southeast Asian food, and, for a county with this many German roots, German food.

Run a restaurant or a food truck here? Tell us what we missed. Every number in this story names its source below.

How we did this: the count of food places comes from OpenStreetMap, the free public map, pulled Nov. 6, 2026, for everything tagged as a restaurant, fast food, cafe, coffee shop, ice cream shop or food court inside Kootenai County. OpenStreetMap is built by volunteers. It misses some places and may still list some that have closed, so treat every count as approximate. We marked a place as a chain when it carries a chain brand on the map, plus a few regional chains by name. K County Media sorted the places into types by their map tags and names. The residents-per-place figures assign each place to the nearest city center within about 5 miles, so they are rough. Population and ancestry figures come from the Census Bureau's American Community Survey, 2020 to 2024 five-year estimates.