Foster’s Freeze has teamed up with El Pollo Loco here in SoCal. There’s still a standalone Foster’s Freeze in Glendale, not too far from a friends house.
I ate at a A&W in Monmouth OR (W of Salem) last year…
Now, one thing I haven’t seen in a LONG time is a Howard Johnson’s. But then, I moved west in 1980.
And the last Hardee’s I saw was in Boulder, CO circa 1988.
I stopped frequenting indoor malls, so I’m not sure, but I haven’t seen an Orange Julius in a long time, either.
And what about Farrell’s Ice Cream Parlors? Are they out of business?
I’ve seen ONE Sister’s Chicken and Biscuits. It was in Salt Lake City several years ago. Very different from the typical fried hicken, served with “homemade” veggies.
A lot, if not all, of the blue-roofed HoJos disappeared som time ago. They finally tore down the 24 hour one in Wellington Circle, Medford MA a couple of years ago. I notice that a lot of Ground Rounds went in where HoJos had been, which made me suspect that they were owned by the same folks. Bt now most of the Ground Rounds are gone, too…
A&W was bought up by Pepsi, which also owns Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, KFC, and probably one or two others I’m forgetting. There’s a combined A&W/KFC restaraunt near my house.
Hardees, as I understand it, was bought up by Carl’s Jr. In some places, they kept the Hardee’s name and started serving Carl’s Jr. food. Other places they renamed it to Carl’s or sold the buildings to McDonald’s or Burger King.
Does anybody remember Little Tavern Restaurants? Actually burger joints, in the style of 1930’s diner/lunch counters. Chipped formica counters branded with cigarette burns, grimy swiveling stools with torn red leatherette seats, flyspecked plate glass windows. They had these little square, gray hamburgers on teeny little buns. The burgers went like this: little bun bottom, little meat square, greasy chopped onion mess, blob of mustard, lone dill pickle chip, and a little bun top. You could get a bag of 12 for about three bucks when I was a kid in Baltimore. I think the last Little Tavern closed about five years ago.
There’s a Dog ‘N’ Suds in Terre Haute that was built within the last 5 years. It’s down near Honey Creek Square on the way to Boot City, if that means anything to anyone.
Hardee’s
Godfather’s
Shakey’s (used to be a cool pizza place with flourescent-keyed player piano, but now is a hogtrough of a buffet)
Long John Silver’s
Wendy’s
A new A&W just opened across the parking lot at work.
There also used to be a carhopped Dog-n-Suds in Washington, Iowa back in the sixties. Now it’s the office for a building supply company. Loved their sign when I was little. The dog looked demented.
It’s not a restaurant, nor are they rare, but having lived out west for about 5 years now, I sure do miss Dunkin’ Donuts. Man they have the best coffee.
Nary a one to be found in SoCal or up here in Spokane. One DD would drive 3/4 of these lame corner coffee shops out of business and give Starbucks a run for its money.
Burger Chef was bought by Hardee’s in the early 80s, then Hardee’s was bought by McDonald’s. There are still some Hardee’s around, but the Burger Chef name has been retired.
Also, there is Godfather’s Pizza in Ohio. They have a restaurant in Chillicothe.
Shakey’s Pizza. ::shudder:: I went to the one in Pasadena, CA a few years ago, and pretty much all I remember was thinking that the food sucked. I haven’t been back.
Growing up in Dallas/Fort Worth, the local variant of Big Boy was Kip’s. I think it was known as Shoney’s Big Boy in the Fairmont, WV area around the same time. According to their website, they only have locations now in nine states.
Unless it closed fairly recently, there’s a Steak and Ale in Hurst, TX. Barring tricks of my memory, that is.
It appears that Grandy’s is still alive and kicking, as well. For a fast food joint, I found their chicken fried steak to be pretty good. Mmm… ::wishes they existed in SoCal::
We used to have these fast food places called McDonalds.
They used to have something called a Big Mac, which was kind of strange for a restaruant since their name was started with “Mc”…I always thought it should be a Big Mic sandwich. Like, where did they get the “Mac”? No wonder they went out of business.
And they had all these foods named “McThis” or “McThat”. And they had all these HR Puff ‘n’ Stuff looking characters.
I remember Burger Chef. We used to go there when we were kids. We often went to the Burger Chef on route 62 in my home town of Hermitage, Pennsylvania. Their Funmeal predated McDonald’s Happy Meal by at least a couple years. Furthermore, I always found Burger Chef and Jeff to be kindly, reässuring characters, while Ronald McDonald always seemed somewhat hollow. But I digress.
The Burger Chef restaurant in Hermitage was converted to a Rax in the early 1980s. Rax eventually went belly-up, maybe around 1990? (Belly-up in Hermitage, at least.) After that, the Rax was converted to a mattress dealership. Currently it’s some sort of evangelical church, sitting there where route 62 meets business route 62—a prime restaurant location.
Hermitage also had an A&W drive-in, but that went out of business in the 1980s, as well (Reaganomics did a number on my town.) Nearby Niles, Ohio, still has an operating A&W drive-in it, as does Carroll, Iowa (at least it did as of 1993.)
Superdude beat me to Druther’s. It was the only real fast food-type place we had in my E. Kentucky one-horse town. They had the best cheapo fish n’ chips platter I have had to this day. I think they were absorbed into Dairy Queen, which the one at home became. (BTW, Superdude, I’m a frequent visitor to Caesar’s Indiana.)
My current home, Lexington, is the world headquarters of Long John Silver’s, so we have plenty of them. In fact, one just remodeled to become a combined LJS/A&W, and another is a combined LJS/Arby’s. I can’t stand them, myself–their commercials always depict a satisfied customer biting into a piece of fish with a mighty “crunch”, despite the fact that their fish has the consistency of a stack of wet paper towels.
We have two Sonics in town (my GF is a huge fan of their Cherry Limeaid) and several Hardees (which serves an OK breakfast biscuit, but that’s about it). I also happen to know of a convenience store in Danville, KY that sells Godfather’s Pizza.
Hey, DRJ…I myself end up in Lexington on occasion. Cool beaners that you go through here quite a lot! Not many people know about this neck of the woods.
Yeah! Zantigos! Wolfing down a mess o’ Cheeseritos, then going bowling! Then Taco Bell bought 'em out and you could get Cheeseritos at TB. Then only at SOME TB’s. Then the sad day came when you couldn’t get them at all.
We used to have Schrafft’s, a chain of inexpensive cafeterias. And Chock Full O’ Nuts, which served cream cheese sandwiches on raisin-nut bread. And the Automats, of course, owned by Horn & Hardart.
There is one HJ restaurant still in business-it is off RT 91 in Greenfield, MA-still serving watery rehydrated mashed potatos, and those famous (tasteless rubber-band like fried clam strips!). Actually, HJ served quite aceptable food-if you liked bland! Their best thing was the icecream-it was great! What a tale of woe-they were the first natinal chain of restarants-till a British conglomerate (believ it was Grand national) bought them out in the early 1980’s-and they died fast!
