Nitpick: actually, they were just Papa, Mama, and Baby burgers. No bears.
A&W added the Teen Burger to their roster sometime in the early 70s. It was basically the same as the Papa Burger except it had the then-novel addition of bacon. I think they were the first fast-food place to have bacon burgers.
Looks like you are correct. I must be blurring things since they had a bear as their mascot.
I stand nitpicked.
I live in Evansville IN, and as a kid, there was a local tavern called Ol’ Sweig’s, with a big family room. My grandfather was friends with the evening cook there, and my family went there often. They had the BEST fried chicken I have ever eaten. No idea what they did differently but I can still remember the taste. Never had anything that came close.
They closed sometime in the 80’s. God I miss them.
Typically I avoid in-mall food like the plague, but the A&W standalone restaurants are, despite being typical fast food, quite good. I’d put A&W burgers up there on a pedestal with Wendy’s. Superior to McD’s and BK in many ways.
Coco’s is still around. There’s one in the next town over we eat at semi-regularly, since my mom loves it. Nothing real distinct about the place, and I will never forgive them for selling my reserved mincemeat pie out from under me one Thanksgiving.
One of my best friends growing up’s parents had an A&W franchise. Loved the place. Gimme a Teen burger, fries and a quart of root beer in the milk carton with the sliding plastic clip.
I was never a fan of Shakey’s. We had one in my hometown in West Texas, and it paled in comparison with the other pizza joints. But we did have one here in Bangkok for a a brief time in the 1990s, an actual Shakey’s, part of the US chain.
Once or twice a year, we’d drive from West Texas to my grandmother’s place in northwestern Arkansas, taking the interstate through Oklahoma. There were three or four Stuckey’s along that route, and we’d always stop at one. Gift shop the size of the restaurant? Hell, it was bigger than the restaurant. They had all sorts of neat shit for sale including a line of magic tricks I’d always bug my father to get for me.
Then driving that same route as an adult, I found it all kind of hokey. 
Shakey’s is alive and well in the Philippines, along with Tower Records and Kenny Rogers Roasters.
We had Tower Records for a brief spell in Bangkok too, but then they also disappeared. So they’re still around? I heard they were having problems. The last one I saw was in Honolulu in 2005.
I feel obligated to point out that Tower Records is not a restaurant.
There’s a Shakey’s just down the street from the Coco’s I mentioned above!
We eat there about once every three years. It takes me that long to forget how crappy it is.
Did you read the part about how I exist because of Shakey’s? Cut 'em some slack.
Jahns! My friend used to work at one of the Brooklyn locations when we were teens. They also gave you a free sundae on your birthday.
I remember so many places, but I think most of them were local only:
[ul]
[li]Dubrow’s Cafeteria (crazy people hangout 24/7)[/li][li]Beefsteak Charlies (unlimited shrimp and salad, unlimited beer, wine, or sangria, terrible steak)[/li][li]Big Daddy’s (fast food with walls full of photos of celebrities next to a big fat guy)[/li][li]Cookie’s Steakhouse (a little classier than Beefsteak Charlies; great bread basket)[/li][li]Westons Burgers (15 cent burgers; killed by McD and BK)[/li][li] A&S Department Store’s Frozen Custard[/li][li]Mr. Donut (before Dunkin Donuts took over)[/li][li]Horn&Hardart (the Automat!)[/li][li]Lundy Brothers Seafood Restaurant (great chowder and old rude waiters)[/li][/ul]
Yes! I always preferred them to Dunkin Donuts. A more subtle flavor I guess. On the other hand when you just load on the fat and sugar it then becomes good again like Krispy Kreme, but Dunkin is somewhere in the middle.
Their jingle:
“Hey, Mister, that’s a doughnut!
Hey Mister, that’s a Mr. Doughnut doughnut!”
Holy cow! I had a Jahns near me growing up and until this moment (I somehow missed the original post in the thread about them) I thought it was just a local restaurant that closed. Had no idea it was a chain.
My brother would always joke that at Stuckeys, you either took a log or left one. I haven’t seen a pecan log in ages.
I can remember the fact of stopping at Stuckey’s. My mother absolutely refused to get on a plane, so all of our vacations as a kid were road trips. As stated, in those days Stuckey’s absolutely dominated the highway exit trade. But I can’t actually remember anything about the place, beyond the name and the fact that we often stopped there.
Their pecan logs were ubiquitous enough to be the subject of a joke on Barney Miller, I remember that. Harris, for some reason, had made an arrest out on the highway, and was telephoning in to the squad room from a Stuckey’s. Wojo, who took the call, said, “Hey, would you bring me back one of those pecan logs?”
Which is weird, because they are disgusting! The centers are like, styrofoam sugar.
Yes! In Jackson Heights. It used to be a real time warp, but it was remodeled quite a few years ago after (if I remember right) a fire.
I grew up a few blocks from that very Jahn’s.
I forgot all about Beefsteak Charlies; they had excellent Teriyaki Chicken. (suburban MD)
One that was so well loved they actually re-opened a decade after it closed in the Indiana State Museum. LS Ayres was a big local department store and they had a tea room that was around for about 80 years or so. The store downtown closed sometime in the 90’s but people missed the tea room so much that the museum re-opened a replica using much of the original furniture, fixtures, and decorations and also using the original recipes.