I sure miss the old drugstores with lunch counter. You could always get a great BLT or ham sandwich. My grandma bought me my first banana split at a Rexall lunch counter. They also made great shakes and sundaes.
I’d love to find a list of old time Drug Stores still open. It would be a fun outing to drive somewhere and have a great sandwich & a sundae at the lunch counter. I might even spin around on the bar stool a few times for old times sake.
We still had one in my city until about 1992.
Do you still have an old fashioned Drugstore with Lunch Counter in your Town?
Bonus points if you can find a list by state of old drugstore lunch counters still open.
Haven’t seen one like that for decades. Back in the 60s, my father bought the drug store next door to his (the store had been out of business of years) and they still had their lunch counter and equipment. He had it for several years until it was remodeled.
But that was the most recent one I can remember. A Woolworth’s near where I live had a lunch counter until it was closed about 20 years ago.
I found this article for Arkansas. Towards the bottom are a few working Soda Fountains.
At least three of these are in “tourist” towns and probably exist for them. Purple Cow is a modern restaurant that recreates the soda fountain experience. I may check out the others during some road trips. http://www.arkansas.com/dining/culinary-quest/side-dish.aspx
Well, we have The Bharmacy- the old town Pharmacy that has been ahemm… “repurposed” into a bar, they have some great draft and midwestern style delicious pizza, they never had a lunchcounter as a pharmacy. But there is the place that will always be Felbinger’s Diner in my mind (the place was built as a restaurant really old architeture style that is unique to the midwest and maybe Rome, IT… It stayed true in the 80’s and 90’s as a fresh beef (probably procured from the IGA or maybe Tank’s.), greasy flattop burger, and shake joint as Koral Hamburger, then it sat for a while, then was a Christian Coffeeeshop, and finally is in its current incarnation as a cafe’ diner… two days after I ate their all you can eat Friday Fish Dinner I caught my first case of the gout. I don’t think the Felbinger’s that I remember is there.
I believe that the last time I saw such a thing was in the 70s. I’m pretty sure that this was the last time I saw a diner/restaurant in a department store, too. All the stores were closing the standalone stores and huddling together in malls, for protection.
A Subway or McDonald’s franchise inside a Target or WalMart isn’t the same thing. It’s a similar concept, the store is doing it partly to make sure customers can eat inside the store (or feed their spawn) and then shop some more. But the diner isn’t really part of the store, it’s just located inside the store.
Oh Yea, the Woolworth Counter and Restaurant… I think late in the eighties as they dissolved that tried and true traditional diner to The Fresh Harvest Restaurant, an eye towards savings, and efficiency, and well, survival/greed we lost something that made us great and special as a nation.
I think that it’s interesting how corner stores have self-serve soda fountains, which enable the customer to mix drinks on his/her own, and of course there are the “gourmet” sandwiches available. I might use one of them for rat bait, but I’d never dream of feeding one to a human. One gas/cstore that I know of even has mini booths so you can sit down and eat your Subway Sub, similar to the old lunch counters at the corner drugstore. And you can get a variety of patent medicines at the cstore, too, like energy drinks.
Do any of these old-timey places, esp the ones in the South show any vestiges of Jim Crow, including where certain changes were later made? Like unexplained double sets of doors e.g.?