Frostop Revisited

Well, Zap Actionsdower looked for a spinning mug.

Midwestern Frostops wouldn’t give him anything to chug.

He asked the Google, "Where can I go?"

Google said, "There's only two places, ya know."

Zap said, "I've seen the one down in Huntington."

Well, Google's list was down to just one.

And Zap took off down Highway 61.

The Huntington, West Virginia area is a broken chain hot spot. In addition to a Frostop and a G.D. Ritzy’s that are a block apart, there’s a Rax half an hour northwest in Ironton, Ohio, and Suzi’s, a Burger Chef holdout, an hour in east in South Charleston, West Virginia. There’s also a Jolly Pirate Donuts in town, that I really should write about at some point, but I’m not here to talk about Jolly Pirate Donuts today.

Those that read my first Frostop post last year, will remember my regret in failing to create a perfectly looping .gif of the giant spinning root beer mug on the roof of the Huntington Frostop. That failure led to more disappointment at the next two Frostops I visited in Indiana and Illinois, as neither location had a spinning mug of its own. I kept meaning to get back to Huntington to have another Frostop experience, but higher priority trips, and life in general have prevented me from making it there since I wrote my previous Frostop post.

Fortunately my recent trip to New Orleans with Esmeralda Fitzmonster took me to the heart of Frostop country. While there were once 350 Frostop locations across the US, only 13 survive today, six of which are in Louisiana. Some Google Street View research led me to deduce that the Frostop locations in New Orleans and nearby Metairie did not have spinning mug signs, and Houston Historic Retail pointed out that the Baton Rouge Frostop’s mug was also stationary. That left the LaPlace, Louisiana Frostop, located 33 miles west of New Orleans on Highway 61 as the nearest spinning mug location.

Ever since writing about Frostop last summer and discovering the blog run by the owners of the LaPlace location, as well as their Facebook page which regularly features pictures and videos of their spinning mug, I’ve wanted to visit the LaPlace Frostop. The owners of that location show an appreciation for the brand’s history in their social media presence that was missing from the Frostop locations I visited in Indiana and Illinois. After a few days of exploring several gulf coast broken chain locations and generally being insufferable tourists, Esmeralda and I found our way up US 61 to LaPlace.

The building stands, as it has for the past 61 years, on the east side of town, next to the highway. It initially looked very much like its counterpart in Huntington, West Virginia with a sloping roof extending past the walls of the building to form a canopy, but a some point, an interior dining room was added. The mug was moved from the roof to a pole next to the building at some point as well. Esmeralda and I walked past the original exterior order windows and inside to order and eat in the building, something that it was not possible to do at any of the three other Frostops I had been to previously.

We studied the printed menu on the order counter and placed our orders, ensuring we both ordered large root beers which came with reusable souvenir cups. I was so happy to be there, I didn’t even mind when the cashier inadvertently short changed me by two dollars. We took a seat at the back corner of the dining room, and chatted while I observed our surroundings and took some discreet pictures. Based on the decor in the dining room, it appears that the dining room has not had any significant updates since in the early ‘90s, though RoadArch.com indicates the addition itself was built in the 1960s.

The view from our table

Most of the artwork on the wall had this general aesthetic.

It was the mid afternoon lull on a weekday, and our order came up quickly. My chili dogs tasted as if they were right off the grill. The chili sauce appeared to have been made from scratch, and while they weren't my favorite chili dogs, (Mr. Quick's dogs have that honor.) they were well above average. Esmeralda ordered a Lot-O-Burger, an item that dates back to a time when Frostop was supported by a corporate entity. Thanks to 30 or so years of the remaining Frostop locations operating independently, there is wild variation in menus between locations, and this was my first time encountering a Lot-O-Burger. It turned out to be a fairly standard quarter pound burger with all the normal toppings. Esmeralda let me have a bite, and while it wasn't terribly distinctive, it was at least a decent burger, a notch or two above its analogs from one of the big fast food chains. While there wasn't anything terribly exciting about her burger, a taste of the hand-breaded onion rings Esmeralda had ordered made me regret ordering fries. It's tough to find good made from scratch onion rings, and that's exactly what these were. I'm happy to report the root beer appeared to be the authentic Frostop formula, further reinforcing my theory that the Chrisman, Illinois Frostop that serves Barq's Root Beer is the outlier.

My meal, decent dogs, forgettable fries, collectible cup

Esmeralda's meal, and the onion rings I regret not ordering for myself. 

On my way out, I ordered a specialty that seemed to be unique to the LaPlace Frostop, the wedding Cake Shake. I expected a flavor akin to the various birthday cake flavored products that have become trendy in the past few years that taste of cake batter, buttercream, and food dye, but the Wedding Cake Shake was distinctive in flavor and appearance. Topped with whipped cream and silver sprinkles, the shake nailed the appearance of a wedding cake as much as a milkshake can, and its flavor with strong hints of amaretto and vanilla is evocative of a cake one might find at an upscale bakery that churns out cakes to support the Wedding Industrial Complex.

Wedding cake shake (top view)

The best part of the entire experience at the LaPlace Frostop, however, was finally getting enough video footage of the spinning mug sign to make a .gif that loops decently. It's far from perfect, but it's as good as I can hope for it to be for a .gif that was captured and edited on my phone. Of course, I noticed too late that the mug had neon lettering on it, unlike it's Huntington counterpart. I guess that means I'll have to come back at night in order to make a .gif of it spinning with the neon lit up in order to feel truly fulfilled as a human being.

I wouldn't mind taking a trip back to the LaPlace Frostop, though. The midwestern Frostops I visited have let their brand identities languish over the years. Thanks to their isolation from other Frostop locations, I suspect that the majority of their customers don't realize that their local Frostop is part of a broken chain. That's not the case with the Frostop in LaPlace, however. Thanks to their online presence, loving restoration and maintenance of their Frostop mug, and the presence of original items on the menu, the LaPlace Frostop stands as a monument to the Frostop brand. With its indoor dining room and thoughtful menu additions it also shines as an example of what the Frostop chain might look like today had it not been abandoned by its corporate parent. As Frostops go, it's a good one. May its mug spin forever.

Broken Chains on Facebook

Broken Chains Store

Mugshot

The missing frames haunt me. 

At the tail end of my tour to every operating G.D. Ritzy’s earlier this year, I made a quick stop at a Frostop drive in just down the street from the Huntington, West Virginia G.D. Ritzy’s. I generally enjoyed the atmosphere of the outdoor seating area despite it being a chilly damp day in early April. I had just eaten a full meal at the Ritzy's up the street, so I just had a chocolate shake, and enjoyed it while taking the time to appreciate the giant spinning root beer mug atop the building. I took a quick video of the spinning mug, but realized too late that I failed to capture a full revolution, and that a .gif made from the video therefore wouldn’t loop properly. Still, I kept the cup my shake came in as a souvenir. You can see it in the header image above. I made a mental note to research and write about Frostop later.

LS Harvey opened the first Frostop in Springfield, Ohio in 1926. The brand expanded rapidly after World War Two and rode the wave of the drive in boom of the fifties and sixties, peaking at around 350 locations in the south and midwest. Like A&W, Dog ‘n Suds, and B-K, Frostop drive ins would make their own root beer using a proprietary recipe. As with many brands covered here, decline came for Frostop in the seventies with a slowing economy and increased competition from the National fast food chains. Corporate support for franchisees ended in the early eighties, rendering the remaining Frostop locations independent.

Today, there are thirteen surviving Frostop drive ins open for business, spread from Mississippi to Idaho. Frostop-branded beverages are also available in select retail outlets in several states, thanks to Ohio-based FBG Bottling who seems to own the Frostop brand these days. Their website has a decent amount of information on the drive ins as well, but the definitive online source for all things Frostop is the blog run by the operators of the LaPlace, Louisiana Frostop.

With nonexistent corporate support for the past 35 years and hundreds of miles between formerly-franchised locations, I thought it would be fun to visit and compare a couple more surviving Frostops and see what, if anything, they have in common. I also needed to find another spinning mug sign in order to get a properly looping video. My recent trip through Indiana and Illinois routed me through two different Frostop towns, and of course, I stopped and ate at both of them.

It was Saturday morning when I rolled into Tell City, Indiana. I had time on my hands. I planned on getting to town right when the local Frostop opened, but had neglected to account for the change to central time, which had occurred somewhere between where I was and the hotel just north of Louisville where I had spent the previous night.

♬Steakhouse for sale or lease,
Traps are full of rancid grease,
No food,
No lights,
Some rats,
The kitchen's full of feral cats.♬

Clumsy song parodies aside, this is the most original Ponderosa I've encountered in recent memory, and I say that as a person who visits a lot of Ponderosas. 

To kill time, I snooped around an empty Ponderosa on the edge of town, which had been closed for over three years but still had its signs up. I then walked a couple laps of the local Walmart before ending up parked down the street from Frostop. I still had 15 or so minutes to kill, so I walked around the block, repeatedly. On my third pass of the Frostop, they were open. 

Tell City Frostop menu

A giant mug would really jazz this place up, don't you think?

This location didn’t seem to offer curb service, as the parking space was limited. Tragically, there was also no giant mug to be found anywhere on the property. Aside from the individual letters along the roof spelling out “FROSTOP” the building was pretty nondescript, little more than a pole barn with a porch. I examined the menu, walked up to the window, and ordered something called an Orbit Burger and a root beer. I had fuzzy memories of some forgotten Food Network show where the hosts were seeking out a flying saucer shaped burger, a beef patty encased in round discs of bread crimped together at the edges. They ended up finding it at some old drive in. Could it have been a Frostop? Had I stumbled on nearly forgotten, retro-futuristic burger by accident? My hopes were high as I removed an oddly placed structural toothpick, and unwrapped my Orbit Burger. I was quickly disappointed when I found the Orbit Burger I had ordered off the unillustrated menu had two patties, lettuce, a single slice of cheese, and was slathered in thousand island. That’s right, it was a Big Boy knockoff. It wasn’t terrible, but wasn’t great. The one detail I remember a week later is that the patties were overcooked and leathery.

Wrapped Orbit Burger, note the curious toothpick placement. 

The aggressively average Orbit Burger in all its glory

The house-made root beer was another story. The typical sassafras/vanilla/wintergreen flavor was there, but there were more complex flavors in the background including hints of cinnamon and maybe spiced apples. Yeah I like to talk about root beer as if it’s fine wine. What of it? I was a little disappointed there was no frosted mug, and disappointed further when the styrofoam cup had no logo on it. The crushed ice in the cup was a nice surprise though. Long after I’d finished the drink, the remaining saturated ice became a makeshift root beer snow cone, which I enjoyed in the car for the next hour or so on my way to my next destination.

Would you drive this car 1200 miles in three days? I was crazy enough to do it, and I'd do it again, I tells ya!

Chrisman, Illinois was my next, and final Frostop stop of the trip a couple of days later. I was in rough shape when I rolled into town. I’d been on the road for three midwestern late summer days in my old Ford Festiva, which is not equipped with air conditioning. I’d spent the night before in a tent, camped out at a friend’s family farm with several other Festiva enthusiasts. I had been up since before dawn that morning thanks to a rooster adhering to cartoon stereotypes and crowing repeatedly starting at around 4:30. I had been outside in a hot asphalt parking lot all day long autocrossing Festivas, and as much fun as I’d had, I’d managed to get what turned out to be the worst sunburn of my life. Still, I pressed on, taking solace in the fact that Google Streetview showed the Chrisman Frostop had a giant mug sign, and I’d have my chance to get my video of it spinning that I could turn into a perfectly looping gif. 

The Chrisman Frostop.

As I piloted my Hawaiian shirt on wheels into the parking lot, I was crestfallen. The mug was still there, but it was badly in need of restoration and looked like it hadn’t spun in at least two decades. The menu bore no resemblance to the menu of the Tell City Frostop, and was augmented by handwritten signs advertising new menu items and newly raised prices. The place was packed. It was a balmy Sunday evening, and the next day was Labor Day. It seems everyone in town had a hankering for Frostop that night. Management had not anticipated this holiday weekend boom, and only a single carhop seemed to be working. She darted in and out of the kitchen serving other customers before she got to me. I ordered a double cheeseburger, fries, and a root beer, and when she returned a few minutes later with my order, she took my money, and said she’d be back with my change.

Maybe spend some of that extra revenue on new signage.

Stationary mug of LIES!

The burger was passable, but in no way distinctive. It could have come from just about any mom and pop burger joint. Simultaneously, it bore absolutely no resemblance to the Frostop burger I’d had a couple days before. The size, shape, and flavor of the patties was completely different. The fries were the generic and ubiquitous crinkle cuts. I was looking forward to at least enjoying another good made from scratch root beer, but was again disappointed to find it completely different than the root beer I’d had in Indiana. The licorice and cinnamon undertones were gone, and this brew was a good deal sweeter. One might say it had bite. The menu at this location prominently features Coca Cola products, so I strongly suspect I was surreptitiously served Barq’s root beer, which would render the giant Frostop mug out front a giant lie.

Decent, but forgettable burger

It was around this time that I noticed I was almost done with my meal, and my carhop hadn’t returned with my change. The scene out my windshield was mayhem. An old farmer was engaged in an argument with some scruffy looking bikers to my right while unruly children were ripping the taped-on paper amendments off of the unusually low mounted menu board directly in front of me. The carhop ran in and out of the door at least ten more times before she came back with an apology and correct change from the 20 I had given her earlier. I was ecstatic to fire up my tiny engine and let all 63 horsepower pull back to my tent at the edge of a cornfield. I got the best sleep I had ever gotten with a sleeping bag and air mattress that night, at least until the rooster woke me up again right on schedule at 4:30.

The building on the label looks a lot like the Frostop in Huntington. 

A week later, I was back in air conditioned civilization with a mostly healed sunburn. I began wondering if that with so much variation between locations, if either Frostop I visited was actually serving the authentic root beer recipe. According The the LaPlace Frostop blog, the bottled version uses the original formula, so I set out to find some in Metro Detroit. Luckily, my local Rocket Fizz carried the stuff, and I brought home a couple bottles to sample. This evening I mowed the lawn, came inside and opened one of the bottles. The liquid inside had the same cinnamony aftertaste, as the stuff I had in Tell City. It's unique, but quite pleasant almost like apple pie flavored root beer. The verdict: Tell City Frostop root beer is the definitive Frostop root beer, Chrisman, not so much. Based on the three locations I've visited, the Frostop brand seems to be a mixed bag. The one in Huntington seems to have the best handle on things in terms of outward appearances, and they make a good chocolate shake. I might have to swing by there for a full meal the next time I'm in town. I'll probably make a new post when I do, and you better believe it will feature a properly looping .gif of the spinning mug.