The rumors are true: Molly Brouse has sold Molly’s Souper.

I dropped into the Upland restaurant for lunch last week to inquire about the sale and leave a message for Brouse, who for all I knew had departed on an around-the-world cruise or something to celebrate retirement.

Instead, she was wiping down the next table over.

She told me she’d sold her popular restaurant Jan. 31 to longtime manager Hermenegildo de los Santos.

“He’s so smart, he got me to work another year for free,” Brouse told me cheerfully. “It’s in our contract.”

So Molly is still very much a part of Molly’s Souper — which was the whole idea.

“I’m excited. I’m going to be here a year so people won’t worry. What people don’t know,” Brouse confided, “is he’s been running it the past two years.”

De los Santos, 38, has been on staff for 20 years, starting in the back, moving up front, running the kitchen and finally managing the restaurant. “He gets it,” Brouse said of her restaurant’s appeal. “It was important to me that it go to someone who understood it and didn’t want to change it.”

“It’s a great restaurant. It’s cozy,” de los Santos told me. “I’m not going to change anything. She’ll be here one more year to help me. Any questions, she’s going to help me.”

I can vouch for her helpfulness. There I was, planning simply to drop off my business card for Brouse, and instead she and I ended up doing a full interview plus photos on the spot, all before I’d even started my shift. All columns should be so easy.

You probably know Molly’s. It’s the breakfast and lunch spot in an old house on the corner of D Street and First Avenue in downtown with seating in various first-floor rooms or out on the L-shaped patio, surrounded by a white picket fence. It is, literally, homey.

The Souper dates to 1972. When the restaurant failed in 1990, Brouse, then 34, took over the space and added her name and personality. Her version was a hit almost instantly.

“And that was 30 years ago. It went by so quickly,” Brouse reflected.

I started eating there in 1997 when I was a new reporter covering Upland. Molly’s, catty-corner from City Hall and across First Avenue from the Upland Unified School District headquarters, was then among the few restaurants downtown. I still make a point of going there. (Try the creamy tortellini soup.) Brouse always has a smile and a kind word for me.

Also, who doesn’t want to eat in an old house?

The house dates to 1912 and was owned by Mary and William Boyd Stewart, who had groves nearby. The couple was well-known for their hospitality, including teas in the glass-enclosed parlor and lodging upstairs for Korean immigrants through the Presbyterian Church.

Brouse is modest about the food, volunteering that it is “very average” and “nothing fancy.” (This is why we love her.)

“It’s just good food on Fiestaware,” Brouse said. “That’s it. Simple works. For me, anyway.”

The appeal, she thinks, is the house, which inside and out seats 210. The decor includes old photos of the Stewarts, framed fruit-crate labels and various knickknacks, porcelain tea sets and mottoes about gratitude and values. A fireplace mantel and built-in cupboards with glass fronts hold more items.

“It’s a little bit of history. This is what makes it different,” Brouse said. “You get to go into someone’s home to eat. People enjoy it. Grandma’s house.”

Speaking of old houses, hers and her husband Linden’s is on the Upland Home Tour on April 5. Their 1917 home at 16th and San Antonio, known as the Whitney House, was designed by Myron Hunt, architect of the Huntington Library in San Marino and the Rose Bowl in Pasadena.

Brouse always knew she would have a restaurant. An uncle owned Gay ’90s Pizza in Redlands when she was growing up. In the Alphy’s chain of coffee shops, she was an assistant manager — “women couldn’t be managers, they could only be assistants,” she said — and learned how to run a business.

She co-founded the old Molly’s Cafe in downtown Ontario in the late 1980s but dropped out after a year when the partnership split, going to work at Homestyle Cafe in Guasti. This is turning into a roll call of beloved Inland Valley hash houses.

For a year Brouse dropped by the Souper daily to check on its status. One day she saw the owners had shut down and walked away. She informed the landlord and they made a handshake deal that evening. She bought the property five years later.

Molly’s was among the first local restaurants to welcome dogs to the patio. Canines even have their own menu.

“I had my dog Mimi, a Corgi. I would bring her to work and put her in the side yard,” Brouse said. “People asked, ‘Can we bring our dogs?’”

Humans were welcomed who might not be welcomed everywhere. Brouse offered meals to the homeless and also quietly started a program in which a homeless person would live upstairs while working in the kitchen, get their life sorted out and then move on to permanent housing.

“Eight guys completed our program,” Brouse said. That ended two years ago when enough other avenues to help homeless people had opened up that she was persuaded to end it.

Molly’s still has its Share Your Toast program. A typical breakfast order includes two slices of toast. Because many customers ate only one slice, the equivalent of 11 bags of bread were thrown out each week.

Customers are asked upon ordering if they’d like to “donate” the other slice — in other words, 29 cents. The money adds up and, with the assistance of St. Anthony Catholic Church’s Bridges to Home program, buys one or two mattresses per month for veterans who are being housed.

Isn’t that something?

“It’s little things,” Brouse said, “but it keeps the community involved.”

She’ll still be at the restaurant Saturdays and Sundays, plus Monday holidays. She’s relieved to no longer be responsible for the restaurant and its 30 employees.

One recent day, she phoned de los Santos and asked how things were going. Busy, he said. She replied: “I’m so glad I’m not there!”

David Allen is here Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Email dallen@scng.com, phone 909-483-9339, visit insidesocal.com/davidallen, like davidallencolumnist on Facebook and follow @davidallen909 on Twitter.