Biff Inquiry: Failed Fortunes

Hi Everybody! Zap here. Today's Broken Chains post was written by a guest author. My new pal Peter was nice enough to visit the last location of the old Biff-Burger chain that still uses the Biff-Burger name. His account of his visit is below:

No matter how long you park your carcass in a given locale, chances are pretty good there’s a hidden gem waiting to be discovered. It might be a patch of greenspace, a historical monument, a parking lot from where the sunsets are given an unreasonably pretty view. Having lived in the greater Tampa Bay area for longer than I’d like to admit, I find myself pleasantly surprised time and time again by something I’ve been overlooking until a chance encounter.

Thus, when I hear from Zap Actionsdower that a building I’ve passed by perhaps hundreds of times is one of the final remnants of a chain that’s been largely forgotten to the ravages of time and expanding multinational corporate dominance in fast food, I make a plan to find out what it’s all about. When I finally roll into the Biff-Burger in St. Petersburg (3939 49th St N) on an early Wednesday evening*, I have certain expectations. Logically, I know expectations are often impossible to meet, but I hold them anyway.

I can’t say with any certainty what this particular Biff-Burger was like when it first opened. A requisite archival search of the local papers doesn’t seem to note its establishment, though it’s hard to be surprised that a burger stand opening in an era where such fares were common wouldn’t have warranted even a passing mention. Given that the chain was founded locally and eventually covered perhaps hundreds of locations, it wouldn’t have been anything special then.

The beautiful, angular “Biff-Burger” sign, dated by the font every bit as much as its shape and complete with an old-style marquee, still peers out over 49th Ave N. The facade could probably use a good cleaning and a paint touchup, but even a newer, completely mismatched and haphazardly mounted sign beneath it (proclaiming a “World Famous Biff Burger” — where’s the dash between “Biff” and “Burger”?) fails to dampen its charm and splendor. There’s a feeling that it must have been meticulously maintained for quite some time, though possibly not recently (as hinted at by the vegetation growing out of it).

The original building (or, at least, what I believe must be the original building) is intact. The lovely red, white, and blue diamond-festooned gable is as inviting as any feature I can recall for a burger joint and it hints at what one must hope would be an era-appropriate interior. It’s underlined by a red and white metal awning. Judging by the pictures on the Biff-Burger.com website, the building appears to have once been Biff-Burger’s “Port-A-Unit” from the early 60’s, pretty heavily modified over time to create enclosed space. Looking rightward reveals the results of what must have felt like an inexorable march of long-term changes: an enclosed dining room (that is likely not actually part of the original building; I’m no architectural or interior design expert, but it feels different than the rest of the building); a covered porch dining area; a long, covered bar that incorporates a line of palm trees into the corrugated metal awning; and another small free-standing building that advertises the “other” dining feature: Buffy’s Bar-B-Que & Catering (topped with a kitschy-in-a-good-way replica of a “57 Chevy”). My interest in making this journey isn’t in the bar, the bar-b-que, or in the myriad of possibly interesting architectural tales and bespoke design decisions of the property, however. I’m after a straight-forward burger experience.

Immediately opposite the front door, the counter presents a variety of mixed visuals. The old-school menu board behind the counter is superseded and obscured by newer LCD menu boards. An assortment of awards and clippings from newspapers about the quality of their burgers is scattered about, taped on various windows or propped up on random surfaces; perhaps worryingly, none of these kudos seem to be any newer than about 5 years ago. Next to the door, making a surprise appearance, is an old-school cigarette vending machine, and I certainly cannot recall the last time I’ve seen that. Seen in the kitchen through the countertop windows is the usual assortment of implements: deep fryers, flat tops, etc. Unfortunately, the location of the “Roto-Broiler” that is considered to be Biff-Burger’s signature cooking apparatus isn’t immediately obvious. 

I have plenty of time to pursue the menu: There is a single person tending to the entirety of the kitchen and (as I eventually find out) two wait staff patrolling the bar. Although there are few patrons inside, a steady stream of drivers from food delivery services and the handful of people ordering outside at the bar mean I am left standing at the counter for at least 10 minutes before one of the wait staff is able to come in and take my order. Perhaps it would be easier for me to join the bar patrons as they eagerly engage in karaoke (to paraphrase from Citizen Kane: Their singing, happily, is no concern of this department), but avoiding groups has become my default over the last 16 months or so, and I am in no mood to change that this day.

The interior dining area appears to be enclosed from the once-open overhang of the building. The booths (and they’re all booths in this area) are a mixture of faux-wood veneer along with orange and yellow laminate that to me suggests they were installed somewhere in the late 70’s or early 80’s. The kitsch adorning the walls might be excessive in another setting, but seem rather natural given the already crowded environs. A number of the tabletops include signs requesting patrons not sit there, even though all mandatory COVID-related restrictions have been lifted by the state government. You could imagine that Biff-Burger’s management has decided to retain some of those for the sake of their customers, but given the cleanliness (or lack thereof) of the tables, I’d posit that it’s equally as likely they have forgotten that those signs are still there, or just can’t be bothered to take the time to remove them.

Looking to remain close to Biff-Burger’s roots, I order a “Cheese Biff Deluxe” (the “Deluxe” indicating the addition of lettuce, tomato, mayonnaise, pickle, and onion), making it a platter with the addition of either fries or tots as well as a side of either beans or slaw (I choose the tots and the slaw, pretending for a moment that the inclusion of vegetables in the slaw somehow makes this entire endeavor slightly less unhealthy). I round this out with my usual beverage of choice: an unsweetened iced tea**. Several minutes later, I am summoned back to the counter to pick up my meal (table service appears to be reserved for patrons outside at the bar).

To say that I am underwhelmed by the presentation would be a mild rebuke, and I am willing to attribute that to the presence of only that single person tending the entirety of the food preparation line. It is possible, of course, that the taste might belie the lackluster appearance of the not-entirely-clean plastic serving tray and the handful of not-entirely-unsticky ketchup packets. After all, who among us hasn’t had something absolutely incredible from a greasy diner, or at least a better than expected sandwich from an otherwise unremarkable fast food joint? I am willing to give the benefit of the doubt.

Unfortunately, that’s where the graciousness allowed by the otherwise nostalgic or understandable deficiencies comes to an end. The food, simply put, is not good. The patty on the Cheese Biff is probably about 2 oz. of overcooked charcoal. The so-called “Biff Sauce” that such burgers are supposedly dipped in after cooking does nothing to restore any moistness. If I had to venture a reason for this, I’d guess it’s that the Roto-Broiler is calibrated to cook the bigger patties used in the larger, specialty burgers, and these smaller patties simply don’t stand a chance. The tater tots, while seemingly cooked for an appropriate amount of time (though I might prefer them to be a bit crispier) are cooked in oil that may be stretched out approximately three changes too long. The coleslaw is simply tasteless generic mayonnaise with cabbage for texture. It is among the most disappointing fast food experiences I can recall; that’s a low bar to hurdle, too. The BIFF (“Best in Fast Food”) in Biff-Burger, alas, turns out to be a DIFF.

However, just like there may be something to Jerry Lewis’ purported popularity in France, maybe there’s something here I’m simply missing. Biff-Burger hosts what seems to be regular bike nights and classic car shows, which I’m led to believe are quite popular. Their specialty burgers might be a step above, and these smaller, classic burgers may still be on the menu only for the sake of maintaining expectations; what’s Biff-Burger without a “Cheese Biff Deluxe”, after all? Perhaps that solitary employee running the kitchen all by themself is as stressed and overworked as so many of us, and just isn’t able to put their best effort forward on this particular day.

St. Petersburg is awash in high-end burger options among the multitude of great dining experiences — both high-end and low-brow — in the city’s relatively recent emergence as a food center. If you want buzzwords around your “sandwich consisting of one or more cooked patties of ground beef inside a sliced bread roll or bun” like “wagyu”, “prime”, “akaushi”, “artisanal”, I promise you don’t have to go far around here to get it. If you want recommendations, I’ll give you several within a 15-minute drive of Biff-Burger. At the same time, I want to give Biff-Burger another chance. In part, it’s because I desperately want to see classic and under-appreciated brands like this succeed. I believe there’s a place in this scene for a straight-forward, unpretentious burger joint. I am, however, going to wait for a time when they’re hopefully better-staffed and recovered from the pandemic-influenced stupor so many of us are only now starting to emerge from. Just to be safe, though, I think I’ll check their inspection record before I try the next time.

Reference: The Original Biff-Burger Drive-In.

*Truth be told, I’ve actually been to Biff-Burger once before, in a possibly ill-advised intra-pandemic visit that was, frankly, unmemorable. Whether this is due to the stress and anxiety of the time or rather due to my own usual faulty memory, I cannot adequately express.

**Whereas carbonated soft drinks are largely uniform in flavor across establishments that serve the same products (e.g., a fountain Coca-Cola from Wendy’s should taste the same as one from McDonald’s, etc.), iced tea can actually tell a diner something about the restaurant: Is it over-brewed? Has it been sitting too long? Is it brewed on-site or is it an instant or fountain abomination like Nestea?

Thanks Peter! 

If you, the reader, liked this post, be sure to check out Peter's podcast, Diggin' With Peter, at this link or on your favorite podcatcher. -Zap

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A Narrative From When I Was Tiny

Back when my raging social anxiety and moderate misanthropy were my only obstacles to in-person social interaction, I would often be asked how my interest in tracking down the surviving locations of mostly defunct restaurant, and occasionally, retail chains began. In many answerings of this and similar questions, I honed a boilerplate response that would be something to the effect of, “I liked to eat at Taco Tico and G.D. Ritzy’s when I was a kid in the ‘90s in Kentucky. All the locations of those two chains near me closed at around the same time, and when I discovered, years later, that there were surviving locations of both chains, it made me wonder what other survivors may be out there.” I’d then credit the late, great Evil Sam Graham’s work in the fast food blogosphere for being my inspiration to document my adventures in writing, and then excuse myself from the conversation as graciously as possible in accordance with the aforementioned social anxiety and my strict upbringing in a culture of honor. 

While my carefully crafted response was the truth and nothing but the truth, however, it did not reflect the whole truth. It showcased merely the most prominent threads in the tapestry of my fixation on anachronistic restaurants and stores. In actuality, a veritable panoply of experiences led to me becoming the very specific type of nerd that I am today, and since I can’t exactly take a multistate road trip to eat inside a restaurant without posing a significant risk to myself and others these days, I thought I’d reminisce about one of my earliest experiences visiting a surviving location of a broken chain instead. 

It was my Aunt Sis who introduced me to G.D. Ritzy’s in the early 1990s, shortly before it became a broken chain. She was often gracious enough to take me and my younger brother on various outings, not only to G.D. Ritzy’s but also to movies and on Christmas shopping trips anytime my parents required respite from the daily horrors of raising children. One day out with Aunt Sis in particular sticks out in my mind as one of my earliest, perhaps my first encounter with what was then a broken chain. 

During my elementary school years, Aunt Sis’s mother, my paternal grandmother, Granny Nova Scotia Actionsdower was in her late 70s, living alone in Stanford, Kentucky. My father and aunt would each try and make the drive down from the Lexington area once a week to check in on her and help with household chores, as did her other son, my uncle, and my numerous adult cousins, all of whom lived nearby in and around Stanford. On a spring day in the mid 1990s, Aunt Sis saw fit to bring me along on a trip to Granny Nova Scotia's house instead of our usual lunch and movie, perhaps in an effort to assassinate two proverbial pigeons with the same pyrite. Even in her prime, Granny was a mediocre driver, and she relied on friends and family to chauffeur her on out of town excursions by the time she was deep into her retirement years. 

Granny was an avid collector of S&H Green Stamps, trading stamps used as a marketing tool by various small businesses to various extents throughout the 20th century and to almost no extent by the dawn of the 21st. The stamps were sold in bulk to business owners who would then give them out to customers in proportion to the dollar amount of their transactions in an effort to attract new customers and encourage existing ones to spend more. Customers then collected the stamps, often pasting them by the hundred in special green stamp books. They could then trade them for items from the S&H Green Stamp catalogs as well as brick and mortar Green Stamp stores. If you’ve ever saved Pepsi points, Camel Cash, or any chain restaurant loyalty points, the concept is similar, except, multiple unrelated businesses gave out Green Stamps and/or other brands of trading stamps regardless of which items a customer purchased. Trading stamps gradually began to fall out of fashion in the 1970s, and things like rewards credit cards serve a similar function today. 

Back in the mid 1990s with Aunt Sis and Granny Nova Scotia, Green Stamps still existed, but were clearly a relic of another time and not long for this world, not unlike Granny Nova Scotia herself. The only business I ever witnessed handing out Green Stamps was the bizarrely old fashioned pharmacy in my hometown that still had a working art deco soda fountain and lunch counter and shelves stocked with decades-old brittle and yellowed packages of Brylcreem and Ipana. Naturally, Granny Nova Scotia enlisted my father to have all of her prescriptions filled by the crusty old pharmacist who ran the place just like his crustier older father before him so she could reap the Green Stamp rewards. She had likewise enlisted Aunt Sis to drive her 35 miles south to Somerset Kentucky on the day in question, with me in tow, to the nearest Green Stamp store, which had recently announced its impeding permanent closure. 

Truth be told, I don’t remember much about the visit to the store itself other than vague memories of standing in a long line amid half-bare shelves in some tiny, nondescript storefront in a strip mall, but the experience gave me a lasting appreciation of the then vanishing, now extinct, concept of trading stamps and perhaps also instilled in me an interest in tracking down the businesses that offer a glimpse into a different time, and whose brands still manage to exist in some small way despite overwhelming odds to the contrary. It was then that I had my earliest inkling about the broken chains that may still be out there hiding in plain sight. I like to think I had the foresight to make a mental note to look into that 20 to 25 years later, but I very likely didn't. 

As if to really emphasize the lesson that a handful surviving locations of a chain often last long past the majority of their brethren, our next stop after Granny cashed in her Green Stamps was at the Somerset Kmart. Granny At the time, Kmart was still a relevant retail brand, merely approaching the precipice of its ultimate decline, but I recall the visit to that Kmart being a nostalgic experience for me even at the tender age of 8 or 9 since the only Kmart my family would ever visit with any regularity was the one in Nicholasville which had closed a year or two before. 

It was late in 2018  when I learned that the Somerset Kmart was still open for business, and was the only Kmart I had visited as a child that was still in operation. It was Memorial Day weekend 2019 by the time I paid the store a visit, which turned out to be well-timed, as its liquidation and closure were announced only a few weeks later, along with the only other surviving Kentucky Kmart in Erlanger. I’ve visited and documented many doomed Kmarts over the years, and I took a walk through the store executing the routine photography protocol I had developed over the course of countless Kmart runs. I was saving the pictures for a rainy day, and since this year has been a deluge, now seems as good a time as any to share images of the Somerset Kmart near the end. 

A sign adorned with branded word salad greeted me in the parking lot.

The exterior was in decent shape by Kmart standards. 

These cart corral signs are usually weathered and faded, not so here. 

The garden center was even operational, a rarity at the time. I'd be surprised to hear there are any Kmarts that still have operational garden centers these days. 

There might still be a Kmart pharmacy or two kicking around though. 

More Pharmacy marked by classic Kmart signage.

It's been a year and a half, so I can't be sure, but I think I took this picture so I could mention that the alleged discount price was dropped from a grossly inflated one, and was still comparatively high. I had bought a comparable freezer from Menards earlier that year at full price, which was well below $200. 

More classic, if inaccurate signage. I haven't seen actual music and video in a Kmart music and video section in years. 

Most Kmarts have these giant round ceiling vents. I try to photograph one in every store I visit. I remember seeing them in more places years ago, but they've mostly vanished from everywhere but Kmart thanks to their perpetually delayed store upgrades and maintenance.  

Starting around the 2018 bankruptcy, Sears and Kmart really had trouble convincing their suppliers they could pay for merchandise. Bare shelves abounded as a result. 

This is the typical appearance of a Kmart soft drink aisle. This picture is from the spring of 2019, long before panic buying became a thing. 

This was a blatant lie, unless they meant that the sales floor would be completely empty and the store closed by the end of the year. 

The Die Hard automotive battery shelf has been nearly empty at every Kmart I've visited in recent memory. One of Sears/Kmart's last assets of any value, the Die Hard brand has since been sold to Advance Auto Parts as part of CEO Eddie Lampert's years-long quest to profit off the lumbering decline of the Sears and Kmart brands. 

Again, it was late May in Kentucky on the day of my visit. The temperature outside was close to 90 degrees, but the Somerset Kmart had plenty of rock salt and snow shovels for sale at full price. 

Plastic totes spread out to hide bare shelves; this was a common site at many of the Kmarts I've visited. It probably still is, but I haven't been to a Kmart in almost a year. 

The Layaway counter likely looked exactly as it did when I was last here during the first term of the Clinton administration. 

Every Kmart has a breakfast nook on display. Who buys them? Nobody knows. 

It wasn't all snow shovels and rock salt. To their credit, they did have a nice display of patio furniture and Kenmore-branded grills. I don't believe Fast Eddie has sold off the Kenmore brand... yet. 

Florescent lighting always looks bleakest in a Kmart. 

As with all my Kmart visits, I try to spend a little money while I'm there gawking. 

The furniture department didn't look half bad. 

This was once the in-store cafe. It was off to one side, though I remember it being at the back of the store. I'm probably wrong though. I was only there once 25 years ago. 

But that’s not all! In January of this year, my beloved Esmeralda Fitzmonster and I took a trip to South Florida, and we managed to visit two of the three operating Kmarts in the Florida Keys. Most people would probably regret spending their last vacation in the final carefree days before cataclysm gripped the world shopping at Kmart, but I am not most people, and Esmeralda was and continues to be a good sport about my various quirks and flaws. In accordance with Broken Chains year-end tradition, below are a selection of photos of those two island Kmarts, who along with around 35 other locations spread far and wide across the U.S. and its territories are the last that have managed to stay in operation. 

Kmart in Key Largo; not pictured are the wild chickens that roamed the parking lot. 

It was the first time I had encountered these cylindrical department signs. They're apparently part of a rare decor package, and I'm the kind of guy who gets excited about that type of thing. 

Remember before when I said every Kmart had a breakfast nook on display? The one in Somerset was $100 cheaper. 

Another rare, if inaccurate, cylindrical department sign. 

The Marathon Kmart is unique in that it has a massive section of the store devoted to fishing equipment and is adorned with an ocean-themed mural. 

Mural detail 

They still had plenty of Christmas wrapping paper out on MLK Day weekend, but it was at least marked down. 

The Kmarts in the Keys were among the nicest I've visited in recent memory. While definitely dated, they still felt functional, serving tourists and locals alike. Hopefully the lack of competition in the area will keep the Key Largo, Marathon, and Key West Kmarts going a while longer. 

That's it for 2020 blog posts. I'm going to try to post at least once per month moving forward, and I hope to be able to hit the road again and return to something closer to my five post per month schedule once things are a little more normal, hopefully sometime in 2021. Thanks for sticking with me during the weird times. 

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Pretend You've Got No Money

My grandparents’ and great grandparents’ generations lived through a series of world-altering hard times. A depression and a couple of world wars made life in much of the first half of the previous century difficult to live through, but their perseverance made the world a much more comfortable place for their children. Once hardship is overcome, and time is allowed to pass nostalgia for the era of one’s earlier, more difficult life often ensues, and that nostalgia inspired not only a solid seven decades of movies about World War Two, but Whisperin’ Bill Anderson’s 1961 hit single, “Po’ Folks,” whose lyrics describe a his supposed upbringing in a loving family while enduring abject poverty.

If one were to open a themed restaurant today, “Poverty” would likely be at the bottom of the list of potential themes, but in 1975 in Anderson, South Carolina, restaurateur Malcolm Hare had different ideas, when he opened the first Po’ Folks restaurant, whose name was inspired by Whisperin’ Bill’s song of the same name. The single restaurant grew to a 102 unit chain, thanks in part to a 1982 acquisition by longtime White Castle imitator, Krystal. Whisperin’ Bill Anderson was persuaded to act as a spokesperson for the chain, after somehow being talked out of a lawsuit, as the Po’ Folks name was initially used without his permission. 

The Po’ Folks brand would end up paying a karmic debt for its socioeconomic cultural appropriation in 1988 when a distinct lack of funds forced them into bankruptcy, simultaneously forcing the closure of the majority of their locations and making the poverty theme feel more authentic, thanks to actual poverty.

I bought a couple of these to go boxes for two bucks each for my collection and for my friend Carl's. 

I’m lucky enough to have a single vague childhood memory of eating at Po’ Folks kicking around in my brain. It was around 1990, and I was preschool-aged and on a trip with my mother to visit her parents, my grandparents in eastern Ohio. My grandparents, in turn, took us to visit my grandfather’s mother, my great grandmother, Cordelia, about whom I remember little, aside from her apartment at a retirement home which was furnished with her uncomfortable antique furniture. My memories of lunch on the way back to my grandparents’ house was more vivid. 

Somewhere along the way, we stopped at a Po’ Folks location that had managed to survive at least a couple years past bankruptcy. Perhaps my grandparents were nostalgic for their childhoods in the Depression, though more likely, it was the only decent place to eat around. I recall the building having white siding and a tall red roof, and I recall being amused by the drinks served in mason jars. My young mind was blown by the fried fish my mother had ordered, because it still had all of its bones. The fact that a real life fish’s skeleton looked just like fish skeletons from the Top Cat and Heathcliff cartoons I was partial to made for a lasting memory. That lunch on the way back to Steubenville from Great Grandma Cordelia’s would be my only Po’ Folks memory until almost 30 years later. 

Strip Mall Po' Folks in Pensacola

Following an early lunch at the last operating Morrison’s Cafeteria, Esmeralda Fitzmonster and I continued east on Interstate 10 until we had just crossed into Florida and entered Pensacola, home of one of just seven surviving Po’ Folks locations. It was mid afternoon on a weekday when we stopped in for second lunch. The Pensacola Po' Folks is tucked into a slot of a nondescript strip mall, a far cry from the visually striking freestanding Po' Folks I remember all those years ago in Ohio. We headed inside, and were shown to a table in the mostly empty dining room. The spacious dining area's walls were sparsely adorned with antique architectural remnants and other random junk. They were the kinds of things you'd see on the walls at Cracker Barrel, but they were spread much thinner. There was plenty of wall space in between. Signage was unique, as well, as all of the signs directing customers to the hostess station and restrooms and away from employee areas were designed to look hand painted, and written in an intentionally misspelled hillbilly patois. The table cloths were printed with ads from old Sears or Montgomery Ward catalogs, just like the tables that used to be at most Wendy's locations. 

I have the strangest craving for a Frosty right now. 

Junk on the walls is spread thin here. 

Our waitress showed up, took our drink orders, and handed us menus. I had every intention of ordering bone-in fish for the sake of my own personal nostalgia, but found only boneless fillets on the menu. Shortly after I had noticed the lack of cartoon alley cat fish on the menu, our waitress returned with our drinks not in mason jars, but in regular glasses. Slightly disappointed, I ordered up chicken and dumplings, and Esmeralda ordered fried shrimp. When our orders showed up, the food looked oddly familiar. Perhaps the decor should have tipped me off, but Esmeralda's shrimp and steak fries looked just like what you'd be served at a Cracker Barrel as did my chicken and dumplings and fried apples. Had Po' Folks been a Cracker Barrel knockoff all along? I'm inclined to think so. Cracker Barrel predates Po' Folks by six years. Both chains originated in the south, Cracker Barrel in Tennessee and Po' Folks in South Carolina. Both chains offered southern cooking in a rural themed setting. Cracker Barrel menus even are written in the same folksy hillbilly dialect, though they've been toned down in the past few years. Given that Malcolm Hare stole the name of his restaurant chain from a hit country song, it doesn't seem terribly unlikely that he'd also borrow menu and decor from an existing chain as well, but in its heyday, Po' Folks at least had unique touches. Now without mason jars or fish skeletons, Po' Folks feels like Cracker Barrel stripped of its decor, country store, and breakfast menu. It's Cracker Barrel lunch and dinner, served out of a strip mall slot, at least it is in Pensacola. 

If you've ever wondered what Cracker Barrel food looks like on an old Wendy's table, then check out Po' Folks

Could you theoretically tip your server well enough that they wouldn't be allowed through this door? 

In researching this piece, I became curious about the other six surviving Po' Folks locations, and did a little Google Street View snooping to see what they had to offer architecturally. What I found was the most interesting and diverse set of buildings comprising a restaurant chain since my exploration of the hodgepodge of structures that compose Fricker's. The Pensacola Po' Folks is arguably the most boring of all the seven surviving location. I'll leave you with photos of the other six. They're a rag tag bunch of structures that reflect the actual poverty of the chain rather than the implied poverty. If you're part of the statistically insignificant group of nonagenarians who read blogs, they may just remind you of the Depression.

2001 34th Street North, St. Petersburg, FL, the last remaining purpose-built Po' Folks. This is what I remember the one in Ohio looking like, minus the palm tree. It's survival is truly a miracle on 34th Street North. I really want to stop in here if I ever find myself deep in the Sunshine State. 

2193 Florida Highway 71, Marianna FL, Shoney's has closed quite a few locations over the years, and they often get repurposed, including this one that's now a Po' Folks. 

650 Boll Weevil Circle, Enterprise, AL, Not to be confused with Western Sizzlin, or Lucky Steer, Western Steer is a mostly defunct steakhouse chain that had locaitons  all over the south. There are a couple still open today that I need to go check out, but this one closed and is now home to a Po' Folks. 

1170 East John Simms Parkway, Niceville, Florida, pretty clearly a former Long John Silvers. It's odd to see a full service restaurant in the shell of a fast food restaurant, but not unheard of.

339 North Tyndall Parkway, Panama City, Florida, Seen here with apparent hurricane damage, the Panama Cty Po' Folks is an odd little prefabricated building.

400 Ohio Avenue, Lynn Haven, Florida, Weirdest of all is this Po' Folks in what looks to be a converted residential house with a haphazard addition. 

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