The modern fast food burger landscape is overflowing with choices, but one of the early burger
pioneers is sadly missing. Burger Chef had a loyal fanbase during its heyday and at one
time even rivaled McDonald's. But then it disappeared forever. Let's take a look at
its rise and fall.
McDonald's is so synonymous with the Happy Meal that you might assume that the Golden
Arches came up with this iconic idea. But you would be wrong about that! Burger Chef,
in fact, was the first fast food place to ever offer such a menu option. In 1973, the
chain changed fast food forever with its Fun Meals, which bundled burgers and a dessert
with toys, puzzles, and colorful characters.
Six years later, McDonald's released its Happy Meal, and Burger Chef didn't like this development
very much. They went so far as to file a lawsuit for appropriating the Fun Meal idea. Unfortunately
for Burger Chef, that suit was ultimately unsuccessful. The company was back in court
two years later when it sued Burger King over its "Fun School Meal." That dispute was ultimately
settled out of court.
Burger Chef and McDonald's weren't exactly the best of pals. There was even a point in
time when Burger Chef attempted to use Mickey D's own iconography against them. In 1987,
The Telegraph published a story about three members of the same family who were all named
Ronald MacDonald. There was 14-year-old Ronald, 39-year-old Ronald, and 71-year-old Ronald.
The oldest MacDonald insisted that he didn't deliberately name his son after the fast food
mascot, but that doesn't make this story any less strange.
The 39-year-old MacDonald revealed that he was once approached by an advertising company
to perform in a Burger Chef commercial. He was supposed to chow down on a hamburger while
he told someone his first and last name, thus implying that Burger Chef was superior to
the Golden Arches. It would've been a forerunner to Taco Bell's "Ronald McDonald" commercial
that aired a few decades later.
"I'm Ronald McDonald, and I love Taco Bell's new breakfast."
Perhaps wisely, this particular Ronald McDonald turned down the offer, as he didn't want to
draw the sort of attention that this would attract.
Burger Chef wasn't originally designed to be a fast food chain. The first store was
started in 1957 by Frank P. Thomas Jr., the president of General Equipment Company. He
opened the restaurant to show off the new food-service machines that his business was
manufacturing, like the flame broiler that he and his brother Donald had patented. This
first place was so successful that Frank Thomas then opened up a second demonstration restaurant.
After this launch, he went on to own and operate two more Burger Chefs in Indiana. Soon enough,
it became apparent that these eateries could become a chain.
General Equipment Company eventually decided to attempt to franchise this idea. They wanted
a new design for their restaurants, so they approached an architect named Harry E. Cooler
to discuss ideas, with the goal of creating a building concept that would help the restaurant
stand out. Cooler's design featured a bold angular sign crowned on top of the restaurant
building as well as a dynamic symmetrical archway that patrons would walk under. It
might not be as famous as the Golden Arches, but it's still a fine piece of architecture.
Burger Chef didn't sling its burgers solely to Americans. Among the foreign markets it
attempted to settle in was Canada, first in the early 60s, and then on a second occasion
in 1969. Some of the ads that were meant to entice the Canadian public have survived to
this day. A couple of them are rather bold and aggressively confident. One of them proclaimed,
"Come to a monster opening at Burger chef."
While another declared,
"Burger Chef heard Toronto likes good food. We got here fast as we could."
However, while Burger Chef was able to talk a good game, it wasn't quite able to hack
it up north. The company did an ad blitz in 1970 but then decided not to market its brand
as aggressively anymore. The chain also lost a substantial amount of money, and McDonald's
ended up crippling their sales throughout Canada. Before the decade was over, you couldn't
find a single Burger Chef in the entire country anymore.
Salty potato slices and sugary soda are two of the pillars of fast food. They're so integral
that it's difficult to imagine a world in which restaurants don't combine them with
burgers and make it a deal. But a world like this indeed did exist for a time. That is,
until Burger Chef changed everything, as it was the first place to advertise the burger,
fries, and a drink combo. This 45-cent deal was christened the "Triple Threat."
Ever since Burger Chef created this deal, a plethora of fast food chains have implemented
the concept in their wake. Among the many examples, McDonald's offers a cheeseburger
combo meal, and Wendy's once offered free fries plus a drink to patrons that ordered
a premium burger through their app. We dare you to find a single fast food joint in the
world that doesn't have a value meal! Clearly, Burger Chef was way ahead of the curve here,
and our hungry stomachs thank them for what they set in motion.
Not every Burger Chef idea was adopted by the masses. Their most notable design that
never caught on was a concept called the Works Bar. It was like a salad bar but for pickles,
onions, and sauces, so essentially it was a spot to put additional condiments on your
burgers. A 1980 newspaper ad for the Works Bar featured an illustration of a mouth-watering
burger with lines pointing to different parts of the sandwich. At the end of each line were
bits of text describing the additional items that could be added at the Works Bar. Underneath
the illustration was the pitch for this concept:
"Heap on the value at the Burger Chef Works Bar. Never an extra charge."
In a way, it makes sense that this idea ultimately didn't catch on. Not too many people want
everyone else sweating on their condiments, after all. That being said, just imagine living
in a universe where getting unlimited pickles for free was the norm. Who wouldn't want to
live in that reality?!
There's one episode in Burger Chef's history that's especially tragic. In 1978, four young
employees working at a Speedway, Indiana location were mysteriously killed: 20-year-old Jayne
Friedt, 17-year-old Ruth Shelton, 16-year-old Danny Davis, and 16-year-old Mark Flemmonds.
This particular location would have started closing at 11:00 p.m. Another employee arrived
just after midnight and discovered that the four were missing and that Shelton's jacket
was on the ground.
When the police came to investigate, they didn't respond appropriately. Instead, they
allowed the restaurant to be cleaned up and they entertained an early theory that accused
the teenagers of taking the cash to go joyriding. The bodies of Shelton and Davis were eventually
found about 20 miles from the restaurant in the Johnson County woods. Friedt and Flemmonds
were also eventually discovered, and it was clear that all four of them had been killed.
Despite police ultimately investigating for thousands of hours, the case officially remains
unsolved to this day.
"Ruth Shelton's family says with each passing fall season, their hope for closure fades,
but their memories do not."
Burger Chef was, for a time, owned by the General Foods Corporation, which in 1981 decided
that it was the right time to sell. So Hardee's stepped in and agreed to buy Burger Chef for
about $44 million. At the time, General Foods chairman James L. Ferguson told The New York
Times,
"We have concluded that this business was not central to the long-term direction that
we see for General Foods."
But this explanation may not be the full story, as General Foods made this sale after losing
millions of dollars. The company had acquired Burger Chef back in 1968 for $16 million.
In 1972, General Foods chairman C. W. "Tex" Cook told The New York Times,
"We over‐extended ourselves, primarily by assuming extensive real estate commitments
and expanding too rapidly. We over estimated our ability to manage a business in which
we had no direct experience. This turned out to be a costly mistake."
As Hardee's was in the process of purchasing Burger Chef, it was putting together a plan
to rebrand a number of the restaurants. This included converting some of the Burger Chef
locations into their very own Hardee's eateries. And after the acquisition went through, that's
exactly what they did.
After the Hardee's deal, there was one particular Burger Chef employee who was very much against
losing the Burger Chef branding. His name was Bill Mitchell, and he was a franchise
owner who teamed up with some other stores in a lawsuit against General Foods. They claimed
that the company had encouraged them to purchase restaurant upgrades even though it was aware
of the pending sale. Mitchell had already spent over $117,000 of his own money to upgrade
his Burger Chef, and he couldn't transform it into a Hardee's as his place was too close
to a Hardee's that was already open.
Mitchell eventually won a settlement of $100,000 and was allowed to continue using Burger Chef's
branding until his retirement. He ran his eatery for another 14 years. But all jobs
and fast food stores must eventually come to an end, and that's what happened when Mitchell
retired in 1996. He ended up selling his establishment to his stepdaughter, who then turned it into
a Pleasers restaurant. It's truly remarkable that Mitchell was able to keep his Burger
Chef up and running for as long as he did after Hardee's bought up the chain. That's
the sort of tenacity that deserves a prize.
It's abundantly clear that the Burger Chef franchise no longer exists. You could look
through every nook and cranny of every American city and small town, but you wouldn't find
a single official store still operating. However, this hasn't stopped some people from holding
onto the chain's old posters, Fun Meal toys, and promotional cups. There's even a piece
of Burger Chef memorabilia in Florida's Burger Museum. In a 2016 video published by the Miami
Herald, there's a moment that features a Star Wars poster featuring C-3PO and R2-D2 hanging
on a wall. Unless it's a lookalike, that's a poster that was made for Burger Chef.
The Burger Museum's owner, Sef Gonzalez, isn't the only person in the market for Burger Chef
memorabilia. In 2020, an eBay user put on sale a set of 136 baseball-shaped disks that
originally came from the chain's Fun Meals. While this page didn't include pictures of
every item, a majority of these objects feature a photo of a different baseball player and
some facts about them. As of August 2020, the items are still for sale for $999.95.
While Burger Chef is no longer around in the real world, it lives on in pop culture. Season
7 of the 1960s-set AMC drama Mad Men features a storyline centered around the restaurant.
The episode "Waterloo" features Elisabeth Moss as Peggy Olson pitching a campaign to
Burger Chef. At first, she's overwhelmed. This is because it's a huge presentation and
the moon landing happened the previous night. But despite her apprehensions, the pitch goes
brilliantly. She starts by saying that the moon landing felt special partly because everyone
was doing the same thing at the same time. As she puts it,
"I don't know what was more miraculous, the technological achievement [...] or the fact
that all of us were doing the same thing at the same time."
"Sitting in this room, we can still feel the pleasure of that connection. Because, I realize
now, we were starved for it."
Peggy goes on to say that Burger Chef can sell its customers the same feeling.
"And we can have the connection that we're hungry for."
It's ironic that Peggy claims that Burger Chef could provide the same interconnectedness
that the moon landing imparted to Americans. After all, as we all know, this chain no longer
exists and thus is no longer able to offer that feeling of solidarity. It's as if the
writers of Mad Men were implying that this feeling can't last, or at least that it can't
really be found in a corporate fast food franchise.
Check out one of our newest videos right here! Plus, even more Mashed videos about your favorite
stuff are coming soon. Subscribe to our YouTube channel and hit the bell so you don't miss a single one.