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A popular breakfast-and-lunch restaurant is set to reopen in May with new owners.

Colonel’s Kissing Booth, on Summerfield Avenue and Emory Street, closed its doors last fall, partially due to revenue lost after Hurricane Sandy.

But four of its former customers — Stephanie Hunnell, Richard Hunnell, David Napoliello and Rich Dutton — decided to buy the business, as well as its equipment, from chef and owner Shiah Blau. The restaurant will reopen — this time, under the shortened named The Kissing Booth — in May, its owners said.

The Kissing Booth will offer the same type of food Colonel’s Kissing Booth had, said Stephanie Hunnell. They’ll have American comfort food, pancakes, omelettes and other traditional fare, as well as a vegetarian menu.

Some of the recipes will be carried over from the original Colonel’s Kissing Booth, and Blau will even come in to act as a guest-chef periodically, Hunnell said.

“We’re so excited to be involved and bring it back,” Hunnell said. “We used to go there all the time. We were sad that it was closed.”

Hunnell works as a lawyer, with a divorce litigation firm in Belmar, and her husband has a lot of restaurant experience. He will manage the day-to-day operations of The Kissing Booth. Both live on Seventh Avenue, although they are originally from California.

Dutton went to culinary school and has worked in restaurants as well, she said, and Napoliello is a longtime Asbury Park resident whose family owns Raceway Park in Englishtown.

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[Pictured above, from left: Richard Hunnell, Stephanie Hunnell and Rich Dutton inside The Kissing Booth.]

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