TAMPA, Fla. — After 40 years of serving their signature steak bomb sandwiches and pizzas, Chubby’s in South Tampa is closing its doors.

Customers have been coming to the beloved restaurant for decades and are now saying their last goodbyes after the owners sold the property.

Christi O’Malley, one of Chubby’s owners, is constantly on the move, making sure orders are being sent out on time.

She’s doing this dizzying dance for 12 to 15 hours a day working at her restaurant, which she and her brother bought about two and a half years ago.

She says it hasn’t been easy, but she said she has thrived here because she not only loves working in the restaurant, but has met some fantastic customers along the way.

“It’s amazing and then you know them and you meet their family. They come all the time,” she said.

Those relationships are what makes this week difficult because this is the last week Chubby’s will be in business.

A couple of weeks ago, after long talks with the previous owners of Chubby’s, O’Malley and her brother put the restaurant up for sale, thinking it would take some time before buyers swooped in.

They were wrong.

“One day, cash offer,” O’Malley said.

Ever since they announced the closure, orders have been coming in like crazy.

“If we were this busy, I definitely would have tried to hire more people to work,” O’Malley said.

But that’s one of the major problems she has had to deal with over the last couple of years.

Hiring has been incredibly difficult. Right now, the only people she’s been able to keep on her staff are her kids and a close friend.

“I mean, she was the GM at Pizza Hut for 10 years so we really lucked out on her,” O’Malley said.

Not to mention, inflation has caused prices to increase, which she says briefly affected customers but is mainly impacting her supply.

“Like, I can’t even get Capicola. I went to three places yesterday,” she said. “My regular food supplier doesn’t have any. Restaurant Depot doesn’t have any.”

So, all those factors have led to selling Chubby’s.

It’s something she still isn’t entirely ready for, but anticipates that when the dust settles, she’ll be happy to move on.

“It’s bittersweet,” she said. “Maybe by Monday I’ll feel a little better. It’s kind of surreal right now.”

For now, she’s not taking any interaction with regulars for granted and will keep zooming around the kitchen until the open sign turns off for the last time.

Despite Chubby’s closing for good, the new owners plan to keep the shop a pizza restaurant.

They’re going to start remodeling the place on July 1 and tell us they hope to reopen it at the end of July or early August.