Similar, but Legally Distinct

I’m a sucker for a good local or regional restaurant chain, even when it doesn’t quite fit the Broken Chains theme. Brands like Taco John’s, Grand Traverse Pie Company, Shari’s, Tudor’s Biscuit World, and Skyline all lack a national presence, but are places I seek out when I travel. All are far too prosperous to be considered broken chains, so I’ve held off on writing about them here. Until recently I thought another favorite of mine, Halo Burger, with 11 locations mostly in and around Flint, Michigan was just another thriving local chain, but a little research revealed multiple connections that made me realize that while Halo Burger is not a broken chain itself, it’s definitely broken chain adjacent, and I feel that makes it appropriate to cover here.

Samuel V. Blair began selling hamburgers in Flint, Michigan in 1923. At the time, for reasons I’d rather not ponder, figurines of naked toddlers, known as Kewpie Dolls were popular. In an attempt capitalize on this popularity without paying any licensing fees, Blair named his hamburger stand “Kewpee Hotel Hamburgs” Note the similar, but legally distinct spelling of Kewpie. Blair expanded his business rapidly over the next two decades, peaking at around 400 locations around the American side of the Great Lakes in the early 1940s. Signage and packages featured a figure that was similar to, but legally distinct from, the chain’s sort of namesake Kewpie Doll.

Samuel Blair retired in 1944, but the Kewpee chain continued with operators paying regular flat royalty fees to Blair and later his estate after his death. Blair’s Flint, Michigan Kewpee restaurants were purchased by Bill Thomas in 1958. Meanwhile, the rights to the Kewpee name and licensing were purchased by Ed Adams, who ran the Kewpee locations in Toledo, Ohio.

Adams sought to modernize the Kewpee business model and demanded Kewpee operators sign a full franchise agreement and pay him a portion of the profits from their restaurants. Predictably, Kewpee operators changed the name of their restaurants, drastically altered their menus, and/or closed, all in the name of avoiding being forced into a franchise agreement. Bill Thomas’ response to Ed Adams was to break ties with Kewpee, and change the name of his restaurants to Halo Burger. Thus, Flint, Michigan, the city where Kewpee was born, suddenly found itself without any Kewpee locations.

Thomas took the Kewpee burger off the menu at Halo burger, and replaced it with the similar but legally distinct Q P burger (Note the second similar, but legally distinct spelling of “Kewpie”) and the chain began to evolve further from Kewpee, establishing its own brand identity, including unique buildings, signage, and new menu items including a Michigan olive burger.

In addition to the Halo Burger locations operating in Michigan, there are still five Kewpees open for business, three of which are in Lima, Ohio, less than half a day’s drive from Flint. Upon piecing this information together, I exclaimed, “Road trip!” to no one in particular, and set off to experience both Kewpee and Halo burger back to back.

I opted to visit the restaurants in reverse chronological order, heading to the Halo Burger locations in Flint first, mainly because I wanted to visit what seems to be Halo Burger’s flagship location in Downtown Flint, and it closes at 2 PM on weekends. The Downtown Flint Halo burger is located at the corner of Fourth and Saginaw streets, in a historic building that was once a Vernor’s Ginger Ale branded sandwich shop. Vernor’s is a big deal in Michigan. There’s still a massive Vernor’s themed mural on the side of the building next door featuring gnomes toting barrels of ginger ale. I park in the little lot next to the mural and walk in the door.

The original Kewpee/Halo location in Flint is long gone, but this seems to be the oldest operating Halo Burger location, having been open since the late fifties in a building that I would estimate dates back to the twenties. Upon entering the lobby, I’m struck by how much of the original architecture is left intact. The ceilings are high and the light fixtures and floors are original. There are ornate arches high above the food prep area. It’s early, and there’s no one else here. I order and my food comes up quickly. I take my tray back to the seating area which is in a room behind the main lobby. It’s nothing special with its old blue naugahyde booths, drop ceiling, and plain walls. It feels like an aging Arby’s in need of renovation, quite a contrast in comparison to the ornate room with the order counter. I pick a booth and examine my food.

Ornate ordering area 

Plain dining area 

I ate at a total of five Halo and Kewpee locations on this trip. When I do a single-theme trip like this one, I like to break it down meal by meal.

Meal #1
Location: Halo Burger 800 Saginaw Street, Flint, Michigan
Order: Q P Burger, Fries, Iced tea

Halo burger offers a diverse array of sandwiches including a fried jalapeno burger, the local favorite olive burger, and even a vegetarian black bean burger. Since I’m studying the connection between Halo Burger and Kewpee, I opt to stick with a classic. The burger comes fully dressed on a split top bun with a circular quarter pound patty cooked on a flat top and covered in nondescript fast food grade cheese. The fries are thick cut and on the crispy side. Thick and crispy is a good combination that’s tough to come by. The burger is good, but not great. It’s thick, sparingly seasoned patty and abundance of sauces and toppings, make for a taste and texture profile that’s oddly familiar, but more on that later.

Whenever I’m covering a chain that sells an olive burger, I have to try one. I’m not especially fond of olives, but making myself order and eat them is something of an inside joke I have with myself. I’m weird. Plus I want to check out another Halo Burger while I’m in the area.

I don't like olive burgers, but I can't stop eating them.

Meal #2
Location: Halo Burger 2248 East Hill Road, Grand Blanc, Michigan
Order: Olive Burger, Michigan Cherry shake

The olive burger tastes like the Q P burger I ate in Flint, but with green olives on it. It’s not entirely unpleasant, but I have yet to fully appreciate the appeal of the olive burger. The cherry shake is a limited time menu item, and it’s awesome. It has just enough cherry flavor without being overwhelmingly sour or tasting artificial. With a little chocolate, I bet it would taste a lot like the chocolate shakes that Hot ‘n Now used to have that had a cherry chocolate flavor. I may try and get a half cherry half chocolate shake the next time I’m here.

Modern Halo Burger in Grand Blanc, Michigan

This location feels like a nondescript fairly modern fast food building and has a large indoor play area in the front, but has a relatively small dining area. Maybe it was the shoes I was wearing but the tile floors feel slippery, like dangerously slippery, but they’re dry. I suspect the cleanup crew used too much floor wax. I’m beginning to suspect no two Halo Burger buildings are alike. This building is of course drastically different than the downtown Flint building, and my usual Halo Burger, just off I-75 in Birch Run, is a brutalist monstrosity constructed out of ribbed concrete blocks. I’ll have to hit a few more locations soon and try and get a feel for their corporate architecture. The walls here are lined with old photographs of the early Flint Kewpee Hotel locations with signs carefully photoshopped to read, “Halo Hotel.” The Kewpee connection is acknowledged on a large poster that outlines a brief history of the brand, carefully filtered through a corporate marketing department to gloss over the disagreement over franchising that caused the split from Kewpee.

The original image hanging at the downtown Flint location.

And the altered one at the Grand Blanc location. (Pardon the glare.)

Brutalist Halo Burger in Birch Run, Michigan 

Overall, Halo Burger feels like a reasonably modern fast food chain. Inconsistent architecture aside, signage, branding, and menus all feel current. They’ve even started offering breakfast recently. Halo Burger seems to have most things that the national chains have. As mentioned before, it’s not a true broken chain, but the product of half a century of divergent evolution after Bill Thomas parted ways with the very broken Kewpee chain. Later in my trip I would note how little resemblance it bears to Kewpee. Even the Q P burger has only superficial resemblance to the burgers I would eat at Kewpee.

The downtown Lima Kewpee, a really neat building with an exceptionally unsettling mascot. 

The interior has the same retro look...

...but suffers from the same aesthetic flaw. 

I had a three hour drive from Flint to Lima, Ohio to let my Halo Burgers digest. Lima is home to three of the five remaining restaurants bearing the Kewpee name. The three Lima locations seem to be truest to the original concept that grew to a 400 location chain before World War Two. My first stop is the downtown location, which seems to be the oldest, a small prewar building, clad in porcelain steel panels, not unlike White Castle and White Tower buildings from the same era. The inside and outside are spotless and seem to be in great shape overall. Sadly, the immaculate condition of the building doesn’t begin to make up for the fact that there’s a larger than life naked toddler statue standing over the door, with two more in the two front corners of the dining area. The rubber mask burger king can step aside as the creepiest fast food mascot, because the Kewpee baby is much more disturbing, crucified on an invisible cross, staring at me with its dead eyes while I’m trying to enjoy a historically significant hamburger. I know it’s meant to resemble but be legally distinct from the Kewpie dolls that were popular in the early twentieth century, but it’s a cultural reference that’s lost of most living people and it strikes me as being in questionable taste at best when viewed through a modern lens. Speaking of lenses, I felt seriously weird taking pictures of all these nude infant statues.

Meal #3
Location: Kewpee Hamburgers 111 North Elizabeth Street
Order: Cheeseburger with mayo, ketchup, mustard, ketchup, lettuce, onion, tomato, and pickle, fries, Diet Dr. Pepper

In an interview shortly before his death, Wendy’s founder Dave Thomas stated that his favorite place to eat as a youth in Kalamazoo, Michigan was Kewpee, and to the casual observer, the restaurant empire he’d go on to create has more than a few striking similarities to the beloved restaurant of his early years. The burger I ordered had a quarter pound square patty, with no seasoning to speak of. While Kewpee has no default burger toppings and asks every customer exactly which toppings they’d like on their burgers, when you top a Kewpee burger with the default Wendy’s toppings, it tastes just like a Wendy’s burger. Specifically, it tastes like a burger from Wendy’s prior to when they changed their original burgers to the “Dave’s Hot ‘n Juicy” line a few years ago. The similar, but legally distinct Q P Burger at Halo Burger also tastes similar to a fully dressed burger from Kewpee. The similarities don’t stop there, however.

The mascot is just as unsettling on a burger wrapper. 

This slogan must have been written before the connection between cholesterol and heart disease was discovered. 

Meal #4
Location: Kewpee Hamburgers 1350 Bellfontaine Avenue, Lima, Ohio
Order: Frosted Malt, Chili

The dining room here is massive, full of bright orange knockoff Eames seating. The walls are made of brick with an odd shiny green glaze. The building itself seems to be from the early seventies, if not a little older, and has a bright yellow roof that would fit right in between a Howard Johnson’s and a Stuckey’s. There’s another giant naked baby statue standing against one wall. The place feels like the setting of some forgotten Stanley Kubrick movie. All three of the Lima Kewpee locations feel like relics of various bygone eras. The buildings, while beautiful and squeaky clean are far from modern. No combo meals are offered, and employees wear paper hats and aprons, not to be fun and retro, but because that’s what they’ve always worn. Everything about Kewpee seemed to have stopped evolving around 1970, right around the time when the chain was falling apart. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with this, I love a good anachronistic fast food experience, but in comparison to the thoroughly modern Halo Burger operation that evolved from Kewpee, it seems the two brands with common ancestry no longer have much in common.

Kubruckian dining area 

Seriously?

The ordering system here seems to be organized chaos. A woman working the counter takes my order while I’m standing near the back of the order line, and I’m called to the front of the line, cutting at least ten people when my small, simple order is ready. The chili is thin and not terribly spicy. There are kidney beans and it’s served with crackers. Had they added diced green peppers and onions to the chili, it would be virtually indistinguishable from Wendy’s chili. Dave Thomas infamously put chili on the menu at Wendy’s as a way to use leftover hamburger patties. It’s pretty clear that he got that idea from Kewpee and attempted to imitate their chili recipe, with a few added ingredients to make it similar but legally distinct. If you’re detecting a pattern here, you can probably guess why I was curious about the frosted malt. Served in a small drink cup with a spoon, not a straw, and light tan in color, with a mild chocolate flavor the Kewpee frosted malt is everything the Wendy’s Frosty wishes it could be. Where the Frosty is full of air, and slightly grainy, the frosted malt is smooth and dense. Every Frosty I consume from this point forward will taste like a cheap imitation of the Kewpee frosted malt.

Thanks to decades of marketing, Dave Thomas has the image of a wholesome, working class father, who found his way to success with his own original restaurant concept. In my opinion that narrative doesn’t quite match reality. When Dave Thomas was putting together his Wendy’s concept in the late sixties, Kewpee was falling apart. The attempt to modernize the business model led to the loss of locations and franchisees. The product was fundamentally good, but the brand had failed to evolve to keep up with the fast food boom that was happening in the sixties. The Kewpee brand was doomed to obscurity in the absence of a viable business plan. Enter Dave Thomas, the original Hamburglar, who opens up in Columbus Ohio in 1969, selling food that is similar to, but legally distinct from core menu items from Kewpee. With his background with KFC and Arthur Treacher’s, Thomas is familiar with franchising and marketing, and is able to become very wealthy selling Wendy’s as a modern restaurant with old fashioned food. Early Wendy’s customers in what had been Kewpee’s core market knew exactly what “Old fashioned” meant the second they laid eyes on those square patties. Robble robble indeed.

One last dining area, note the infants nailed to the walls for... reasons. 

Meal #5
Location: Kewpee Hamburgers, 2111 Allentown Road, Lima, Ohio
Order: Cheeseburger with pickles, onions, and mustard, pecan pie, Diet Dr. Pepper

Dave Thomas famously liked his Wendy’s burgers with only pickles, onions, and mustard, and my theory is he first ordered them this way from Kewpee, so I wanted to get a taste of the burger that inspired his similar, but legally distinct offerings at Wendy’s. It’s a good combination of flavors. Maybe I’ll start ordering my Wendy’s burgers this way. Also, I got pecan pie, because I like pecan pie. Kewpee had a few different pies available. I wish Wendy’s had similar, but legally distinct pies.

This was my favorite building exterior of the trip. Note the separate smaller yellow roof for the drive thru window.

The movie, The Founder, made the story of Ray Kroc’s creeping takeover of McDonald’s from the eponymous McDonald brothers common knowledge. I suspect the point in history in which Halo Burger and Wendy’s evolved from the relic that was Kewpee could also make for a fascinating piece of cinema. Hopefully the set designers could find a way to make the Kewpee statues significantly less creepy. If they don’t, it would go over about as well as the Wendy’s Superbar, which by the way was similar to, but legally distinct from, the Rax Endless Salad Bar.

What's Left of Lum's?

John Y. Brown Jr. is a figure in fast food history I’ve discussed before. During his long career as a lawyer, restaurateur, businessman, and politician, he had proverbial fingers in many proverbial pies. The Lexington, Kentucky native worked his way through the University of Kentucky as a door to door salesman, eventually earning a law degree. When the fast food industry was exploding in the early sixties, Brown and his wife Eleanor operated a small chain of barbecue restaurants. Brown’s experience in foodservice led to him meeting Colonel Harland Sanders at a political event in 1963, and eventually convincing venture capitalist Jack C. Massey to buy the entire KFC enterprise from the Colonel while keeping Sanders on the company payroll as a spokesman. With Brown as chairman KFC’s business model transformed from a chicken recipe sold to franchisees to be prepared and sold in otherwise independent sit-down restaurants to the traditional fast food concept that survives today.

Brown and Massey sold the KFC brand in 1971, the same year a group of investors led by Brown purchased the Lum’s restaurant chain from brothers Stuart and Clifford Perlman, who had purchased Caesar’s Palace a couple of years earlier. Lum’s origins can be traced to 1956 when the aforementioned Perlman brothers purchased a 16 seat hot dog stand in Miami beach. Lum’s evolved into an early fast casual chain, peaking at around 450 locations. Hot dogs steamed in beer were their signature menu item. When John Y. Brown took over the helm at Lum’s, he concluded that the menu needed additional distinctive items beyond lager-soaked weiners. Those of you who read my piece on Arthur Treacher’s will no doubt remember that the marketing strategies of most chains influenced by Brown all featured a Colonel Sandersesque spokesperson, and once Brown took over, Lum’s was no exception.

Enter Ollie Gleichenhaus, a notoriously cranky Miami restaurateur, whom Brown hired. Gleichenhaus brought with him his signature Ollieburger, a hamburger marinated in 23 secret herbs and spices. Sound familiar? Brown’s strategy was for Ollie to be the Colonel Sanders of Hamburgers, and 23 herbs and spices sounds much more impressive than the Colonel’s eleven. The Ollieburger was marketed as the “World’s best hamburger.” With Ollie on board, Lum’s locations began selling Ollieburgers and Ollie Fries, fries tossed in Ollie’s spice blend, alongside the beer-steamed franks. In 1979, Brown sold Lum’s to Weinerwald, a Swiss restaurant company known for schnitzel, not weiners. Brown ran for the office of Governor and Kentucky in 1979 and won. Weinerwald, in turn, declared bankruptcy in 1982, forcing most Lum’s locations to close before the end of Brown’s single term in office.

So what’s the current state of Lum’s? The short answer is that there are none left. According to Wikipedia, the last holdout Lum’s location, located in Bellevue, Nebraska closed in May of 2017.

(I’m somewhat skeptical of this, as Wikipedia also says there are no White Tower restaurants left in operation, but I know of one in Toledo, Ohio that’s still open for business, albeit with a drastically altered menu.)

The long answer is that while Lum’s is gone it’s spinoff brand, Ollie’s Trolley lives on.

Ollie’s Trolley, was designed as an ultra-low cost, quick service, companion to Lum’s. Locations were tiny buildings designed to resemble trolley cars, occupying a footprint roughly equivalent to four medium-sized parking spaces. The diminutive restaurants began popping up in mostly urban settings in the mid seventies, selling Ollieburgers, Ollie fries, and not much else. There was no inside seating, and very limited, if any outside seating. Customers would enter a tiny room with an order counter at one side of the building to order. In a time when many fast food outlets were beginning to offer drive thru service, Ollie’s Trolley offered walk-up service only. The buildings were designed to be set up on small, cheap pieces of land, often existing parking lots, and I suspect the extra real estate and logistics needed for a drive thru would have defeated the purpose of the ultra basic concept. The first Trolleys opened in Louisville, Kentucky, and there were around 100 of them in operation at their peak. The lack of drive thru service and Weinerwald’s bankruptcy forced most Ollie’s Trolleys out of business by 1980. Near as I can tell, there are three left in operation, one in Washington D.C. which operates out of a more conventional storefront, and seems to market their Ollieburgers as a high end product, on par with Shake Shack. There’s also one in Cincinnati, still in the original trolley car building, which sells Ollieburgers and Ollie Fries in addition to an expanded menu. The third is located in Louisville, Kentucky, and seems to be the truest to the original concept. I opted to check out the Louisville location.

No, it's not the Neighborhood of Make-Belive. It's Old Louisville. 

Menu or middle school science fair display?

The Louisville Trolley is located in the neighborhood known simply as Old Louisville. It’s situated on a corner near the sidewalk, and shares a lot with what looks to be a long-deserted gas station. I park a block away and walk to the corner. It’s about 1:00 PM on a Friday afternoon, and I’m somewhat surprised to see a line about 15 people long stretching from the building’s door. As I get in line, I note a beefy, spicy aroma in the air. The line, made up of older working class people and a few young hipster types, (I like to think I'm somewhere on the middle of that spectrum.) moves pretty quickly, and soon I squeeze my way inside the door. I knew the order counter area would be small, but I wasn’t prepared for just how small it would be. The entire space is maybe four feet by eight feet, and there are at least four other customers in there with me. The menu board is homemade and housed in a glass case on the wall. It reminds me of an elementary school bulletin board. There are a few burgers on the menu, which clearly defines what an Ollieburger is, and calls out which burgers are not Ollieburgers, to avoid confusion when ordering. I suspect most first-timers don't research the history of the Ollieburger to the extent I have. I order up an Ollieburger with everything on it, Ollie fries, an extra cup of Ollie sauce, and because I’m in Kentucky, a sweet tea. I pay with cash, the only payment option, and pick up my food at the next window, maybe two minutes later. I walk back to my van with my food. 

The long line certainly supports the "World's greatest hamburger" claim. 

I suspect the Cajun fries they serve at Five Guys are influenced heavily by Ollie Fries. The spice mixture is similar, though not quite as hot as Five Guys. Ollie Fries are also crispier and cut a bit thinner. Just like Five Guys, my fries are on top of the bag, burying my burger. I eat a few and dip them in the Ollie Sauce until I can gracefully exhume my Ollieburger. The Ollie Sauce is an interesting take on the ubiquitous ketchup+mayo fast food special sauce. Rather than pickle chunks, there seem to be small pieces of pimento present, and maybe some of the Ollie spice blend too, though it’s hard to tell because my fries are also coated in the same spices. The sauce reminds me of the pimento cheese spread you see all over the South, but without the cheese, if that makes any sense. The elusive Ollieburger, is the main event, and it didn’t disappoint. The quarter pound patty is juicy with a complex savory flavor with hints of cayenne and celery salt. I think there’s some sage in there too. The texture is more tender than most burgers this size, but not unnervingly so, no doubt a product of Ollie’s marianating process. There’s a thick chunk of Mozzerella cheese and a generous portion of Ollie Sauce, and the flavors work pretty well together. I might forego the vegetables next time, as they seem to throw off the balance of flavors and textures a bit. I don’t know if it lives up to John Y. Brown’s world’s best hamburger hype, but it’s definitely unlike any burger experience I’ve had before, and was well worth seeking out. I’ll be back the next time I’m in Louisville.

Ollie Fries, like Five Guys fries, but good.  

The Ollieburger, pretty tasty, and historically significant. Apprieciate it on all the levels I do!

The Ollieburger, with it’s brief fame, and quick descent into obscurity, is a bit like an aging one hit wonder musician. Eating at a still-operating Ollie’s Trolley in 2018, is a bit like stumbling upon said musician giving a rare, one night only performance in a dive bar. The listener/taster is afforded a rare glimpse into a brief moment of brilliance under the patina of several decades of obscurity. It’s these fleeting remnants of near-forgotten history that keep me on the road seeking out the remaining, intact links in otherwise broken chains.

Treacher Feature

When future Kentucky governor John Y. Brown's investor group purchased Colonel Harland Sanders’ fried chicken business 1964, Brown kept the Colonel on the company payroll as a spokesperson. Sanders would appear in commercials and in person at restaurant openings essentially for the rest of his life. As a result, restaurant chains that descended from KFC directly or sought to blatantly imitate it (Lookin’ at you, Minnie Pearl!) often featured either a celebrity spokesperson or the chain’s founder appearing in marketing materials. Kenny Rogers Roasters, Ollie’s Trolley, and even Wendy’s are all somehow related to the man in the white suit.

Wendy’s founder Dave Thomas seemed to appear in every Wendy’s commercial of my childhood. In fact, he appeared in over 800 ads until his death in 2002. But before opening the first Wendy’s in 1969, Thomas was a Kentucky Fried Chicken franchisee. I suspect his decision to appear in his own commercials was heavily influenced by KFC's use of Colonel Sanders as a spokesman. Around the time Dave Thomas sold his KFC franchises back to the company, and shortly before he opened the first Wendy’s, he had a brief flirtation with seafood and yet another spokesperson.

Arthur Treacher was an English character actor who built a career for himself in the 1930s playing stereotypically British roles in films. His IMDB page shows him being credited as playing a butler at least thirteen times. The only thing I’ve seen him in is Mary Poppins, in which he played the constable. Thanks in part to regular appearances on the Merv Griffin show, Treacher was enjoying a resurgence in popularity in the 1960s. He therefore seemed the natural choice to be the spokesman for a new fish and chip restaurant concept in which Dave Thomas was an investor.

Arthur Treacher’s Fish and Chips debuted in 1968 and expanded quickly well into the 1970’s, peaking at between 800 and 900 locations. Eventually fish shortages and lawsuits filed by franchisees citing a decline in quality of the brand resulted in multiple ownership changes and bankruptcies. This led most locations closing. It probably didn’t help that Arthur Treacher himself died of natural causes at the age of 81 in 1975. 

In the year 2018, no one under the age of 60 is likely to know who Arthur Treacher is, yet seven Arthur Treacher’s locations are open for business in Ohio and New York. (Some Nathan's locations also offer some Arthur Treacher's branded items.) The brand is now owned by Nathan's Famous, the hot dog eating contest people. A separate company called TruFoods has the franchising rights to the name within a certain territory. TruFoods cobrands its three New York Arthur Treacher’s, all of which are on Long Island, with their Pudgie’s Famous Chicken concept. The Ohio Arthur Treacher’s are controlled by TruFoods, are not cobranded and operate out of dedicated freestanding buildings, some of which retain vintage four-sided lantern shaped signs. It was the allure of these Ohio Arthur Treacher’s, (Plus an Arby’s operating out of an old Howard Johnson’s) that prompted me to spend a weekend in Cuyahoga Falls. 

28 flavors... OF MEAT!

I had never eaten at an Arthur Treacher's before, and have no real nostalgic connection to the brand. Like about half the trips I take, this one was motivated by a desire to experience the final sliver of a once-great fast food empire rather than the sense of nostalgia I feel for chains like Taco Tico or G.D. Ritzy's. Unlike a lot of the places, I visit, Arthur Treacher’s parent company, TruFoods, is still actively involved in supporting them. The dining room of the Cuyahoga Falls restaurant has reasonably modern-seeming marketing signs and posters on the walls and windows. A few even seem to indicate the brand has a presence on Facebook. (As of the time of this writing, the last official post on their Facebook page was in February 2017.) 

This napkin dispenser wants to tell you about an exciting franchising opportunity. 

"Treach" is a verb.

I ordered an original fish and chips platter and a Lemon Luv, a fried lemon pie. My food comes out before I can fill my drink cup, which is printed with British Flags and the chain’s logo. Despite the speed with which my order came out, the fish, fries and hush puppies taste hot and fresh. The Lemon Luv, which I suspect has been altered since the chain’s heyday, is my new favorite fast food pie. It’s lemony and creamy and is even better than Whataburger’s lemon pie. Sorry Texans. The packaging has no Arthur Treacher's or Lemon Luv branding, and instead has the logo of J&J Snack Foods' Sweet Stuffers line of fried pies. J&J Snack Foods appears to be a company that supplies pastry items to independent restaurants. If their lemon pie is any indication, they do good work. Likewise, the fries are not the short, thick British chips I expected a British themed place to have. Rather they're pre-cut frozen fries, the kind with the crinkle cut running lengthwise. If you've eaten at a Denny's in the past few years, they're just like the current Denny's fries, probably from the same supplier. Still, there's a malt vinegar bottle on every table to lend a bit of authenticity to the experience. 

This was one of the better fast food seafood meals I've had in recent memory.

Lemon Luv packaging, 

'Ello, Luv. Give us a kiss.

Often the places I visit are frozen in time once the corporate support goes away. Menu boards are sometimes decades-old, and dining areas tend to be similarly out of date. This can be charming or off-putting, depending on how well buildings are maintained. The building housing Arthur Treacher's feels surprisingly modern. I'm guessing it was built in the eighties, but the menu decor inside seems to have been updated within the past 15 years or so. The menu boards seem even newer. The vintage four-sided lantern sign is still out front in the parking lot beckoning people in off the street. It's a good blend of new and old. TruFoods is definitely attempting to keep the concept up to date and appears to be intent on growing their business.

There's fine print on every poster, and even my drink cup with numbers to call if you're interested in owning a franchise. Even the URL of their official website is www.arthurtreachersfranchising.com . I was impressed with the meal I had in Cuyahoga Falls, but I can't help but think that the appeal of a batter-dip-and-fry-everything style fast food seafood joint named for a long-dead character actor is somewhat limited in the modern marketplace. I'll be interested to see what kind of future this broken chain has. I suspect at the very least that the location I visited will be able to stay in business for quite a while longer. Everything about it seems shipshape in Bristol fashion.