There Once Was a Fast Food Chain From Holt

My friends and my family can't quell me,

From this rhyming habit, unhealthy,

This limerick shtick, 

Is a moldy old trick,

That I stole from Wait Wait Don't Tell Me.

There once was a fast food chain from Holt,
That sprang up quick, like old Usain Bolt.
Hot 'n Now was their name,
And from Michigan they came.
But they went down in a fast food revolt. 

They didn't have tables or servers, 

And sold drive-thru olive-topped burgers.
Most closed up in the nineties,
Leaving buildings behind, these,
The result of too many bad mergers. 

This one sits abandoned in Grand Rapids.
No new tenant moved in, so it happens.
Unkempt and alone,
Yet next to Auto Zone
One can hope that it's not dead, just nappin'. 

Across town, another is empty.
Devoid of a new occupant's symp'thy.
A later building design,
This Hot 'n Now could be mine.
If a real estate agent could tempt me. 

Not every Hot 'n Now is deserted.
This one, by renovation perverted.
But there's no need to sigh,
Because they serve up pad Thai.
With the building's old branding subverted.  

This one in Saginaw is a vape shop.
For nicotine addicts, a great stop.
Their usual crowd's,
Always ripping fat clouds,
Smelling like Froot Loops, gummies, or grape pop. 

This old Hot 'n Now just sells java,
Presumably served cold or like lava.
Another business in town,
Also makes money off brown.
'Cause that septic truck's not full of guava. 

It's been a while since this one saw action,
Serving ice cream like Robbins and Baskin
Its roof once was red,
But now, it's yellow instead.
And it's named for a film with Bill Paxton.

This Hot 'n Now, of the newer variety,
Gives preservationists little anxiety.
They didn't change much,
Just new signs and such.
So the building maintains notoriety. 

This one in Toledo grew awnings.
At its name, "Netty's," I'm not fawning.
Not Lucy's, nor Linuses,
It will clear out your sinuses.
And the monochrome orange leaves me yawning. 

This old Hot 'n Now wears a costume.
With a custom facade, it is entombed.
Sir, this is now an Arby's,
Where you stay in your car, please.
There's no dining room just a drive-thru.

That Arby's is my cue for conclusions.
And some vague current event allusions.

This post was brought to you

By Google Street View

Because I'm still stuck in seclusion. 

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Rax/Rix/Jax Pics

Things haven gotten weird, and I haven’t posted for a while.

I am stuck at home, and I can't travel. 

So I thought I’d write about fast food with style

In hopes that my sanity doesn’t completely unravel. 

Rax Roast Beef is a chain that’s been on my mind,

For the past couple years, since my Rax meat-cute. 

Their decline left hundreds of buildings behind, 

I thought I’d show you some from Google Street View. 

But before I do, I should probably produce, 

From my vast, fast food photo archives, 

Some pictures of Rax locations that are still in use, 

That lurk in dark corners of my hard drive. 

Harlan, Kentucky, birthplace of Raxgiving
Has a classic Rax with slot windows and a solarium.
As the last Rax in the state, it's quite good at outliving,
And functions like a 1980s vivarium.

Joliet, Illinois has the world's oldest Rax.
Despite the roof, it never sold pizza nor breadsticks.
This architecture was typical of Jax,
Jax changed to Rax after it was Rix 

Of these building types there is quite a glut.

If you keep an eye out for their features,
You'll see more Rax buildings than Seymour saw butts, 

When he hid out under the bleachers. 

This Rax in Anderson was the last in Indiana,
But it closed in 2011
It now does Hibachi just like, Benny and Hannah
Hey, at least it's not a Bob Evans. 

This National Coney is an old Rax, you can tell,
On the east side of Metro Detroit.
All things considered, I'd say its aged pretty well,
Which is more than I'd say for Jon Voight. 

Uncle Alligator left this empty Rax long ago,
Back when people still carried a beeper.
How much longer it will stand, nobody knows.
(Please ignore my old Ford Festiver.)

Grand Rapids, Michigan has its own Jax/Rix era relic,
Though it served its last BBC in antiquity.
It's roof resembles the mustache of Tom Selleck,
Now on with the next part of the soliloquy.

Taco Johns removed the solarium here,
At this old Rax in Billings, Montana.
But the slotted windows make its first occupant clear,
Despite the big yellow veranda. 

Frisch's Big Boy took over the Perrysburg Rax,
That's just down the street from Ground Round.
They still serve a buffet and salad bar snacks,
Like they did when Rax was in town. 

Skyline annexed this Rax in Columbus,
To serve a taste of old Cincinnati.
The new color scheme probably caused quite a ruckus.
Blue like Gonzo, yellow like Selma and Patty. 

Canadians brought about this Rax's defeat,
But their victory showed little promise...

...when a new Rax opened right down the street,
In a structure built by Dave Thomas.

So keep your eyes open when you can go out safely, 

There might be an old Rax 'round the corner. 

But for now, please stay inside, even if you're not gravely,

And await restoration of order. 

Thanks for reading this post that I wrote while sheltered in place. 

I hope that things soon start back toward normal. 

I'll try to write more, soon despite no trips outside of my space.
Though the rhyme schemes may become more informal. 

Special thanks to Columbus Restaurant History and Forgotten Michigan for providing information on the addresses of former Rax locations. 

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Springtime for Ground Round and Bennigan's

I’m writing this post on the heels of the first warm day in March, which occurred, in my part of the world, this past Sunday, offering consolation for the missing hour of sleep the night before, courtesy of the start of daylight saving time. Though the vernal equinox is still a couple weeks out, I’m in a spring state of mind. I’m ready for grass to be green and the flowers to bloom. I’m counting the days until my local walk-up Dairy Queen opens for the season. All around me, both biological and retail life are being reborn, and the broken chains are no exception.

The state of Ohio has proven to be a deep well, which I’ve returned to more times than any other state in search of broken chain experiences. I attribute this mostly to the fact that Ohio’s population is spread evenly across several small to medium-sized cities, providing ideal conditions for broken chains to survive in every corner of the state, not to mention its close proximity since I live nearby in Southeast Michigan, a 45 minute drive from the Ohio state line. Even as I exhaust Ohio’s supply of broken chain sites, new ones have popped up, coming to life after their brands have long laid dormant like perennial flowers or hibernating woodland creatures do as winter gives way to spring. I spent my weekend visiting these newly-minted locations of chains that, by virtue of their recent, limited growth, are now a little less broken. Both the Perrysburg Ground Round (Opened February 2020) and the Steubenville Bennigan’s (Opened November 2018) are locations of two unrelated chains that opened long after a significant decline in their respective brands. In a tribute to the impending rebirth that comes with the spring season, I took a trip to visit both locations in one day.

Loyal readers may recall I’ve written about both Ground Round and Bennigan’s in the past, detailing their declines and assessing the current state of each brand in the present-day. I also made a few missteps in visiting each location that I hoped to correct when revisiting each brand, using the spring season as an excuse to approach each chain with a clean slate, but armed with the knowledge of past experiences. My mistake at Bennigan’s was dining by myself, so my life partner, Esmeralda Fitzmonster came with me on this trip. My blunder at Ground Round was arriving with an insufficient appetite, so Esmeralda and I skipped breakfast, and headed to Perrysburg for an early lunch.

Ground Round was originally a subsidiary of Howard Johnson, back when the name was as, if not more closely associated with restaurants as it was with hotels. As with the Howard Johnson restaurant brand, Ground Round passed between a series of corporate owners until it wound up in the ownership of a consortium of surviving franchisees. At the time of my visit to the Tomah, Wisconsin Ground Round last year, there were 17 locations in the chain, but the new location in Perrysburg is the eighteenth in a chain that once had 200 restaurants. The Perrysburg Ground Round is not only the sole location in Ohio, it’s also the only Ground Round between Milwaukee and Philadelphia, a lone outpost in the fragmented chain, housed in a location the Howard Johnson executives who developed the Ground Round concept would have never dreamed of. The Perrysburg Ground Round is located on the ground floor of a newly-constructed Holiday Inn, literally sharing space with a hotel belonging to its one-time corporate parent’s fiercest competitor. This arrangement is possible due to the dissolution of the official affiliation between the Ground Round and Howard Johnson brands decades ago, which occurred when Howard Johnson’s restaurant and hotel divisions were acquired by separate outside companies. 

The Perrysburg Ground Round shares space with its one-time rival.

Esmeralda and I arrived around 11 on a Saturday morning, parked in a lot still speckled with mud from construction equipment, and headed inside for an early lunch. A hostess was posted near the front door, and immediately seated us in a booth. We had the main dining area to ourselves, though a few patrons were present in the bar, which was housed in a separate room, as it was and is in most, if not all Ground Round locations. The brightly-lit dining room was the antithesis of its dim, windowless counterpart that I’d previously visited in Wisconsin. While that Ground Round location’s decor had nods to the history of Ground Round, none were present in Perrysburg. The vibe was not unlike that of a hotel room, clean and pleasant, if a bit generic. For better or worse, I was very aware I was adjacent to the lobby of a hotel for the duration of my meal.

Why are there booths in this hotel room?

Unlike my previous Ground Round, I ordered something that actually contained ground beef, a Clubhouse Burger, essentially a club sandwich with a ⅓ lb hamburger patty in place of turkey. I was hoping for a better outcome than when I had ordered a club sandwich at Bakers Square a few weeks prior. Esmeralda ordered a burger of her own, and our server arrived with them a few minutes later. While the quadrants of my burger/sandwich hybrid had been hacked into drastically different sizes, the cuts had at least been made at a proper 90 degree angle to the cutting surface, so my Clubhouse Burger was better in terms of construction than the Bakers Square club sandwich. The burger patty was a little on the dry side for a burger, but not unpleasantly so, and had a steaky flavor that made me suspect it had indeed been made with actual ground round rather than the fattier ground chuck that is more commonly used for burgers. Sadly, the top layer was missing the ham that the menu promised would be there, but I hardly missed it thanks to a generous portion of bacon. All was going swimmingly until our server asked how our meal was, and I replied, “So far, so good.” She used my reply as an opportunity to provide us with an unwanted, impromptu dissertation on the 2016 remake of The Magnificent Seven. My reply to her seemingly provided a flimsy segue, as the film’s dialog apparently contained the very commonly spoken phase, “So far, so good.” She seemed to be a great fan of the movie, but I’d hesitate to go so far as to say it was her favorite, as she could only name two members of the cast, which, I’d wager contains at least five more actors.

I wish I could order all my food cut into quarters and impaled on fancy toothpicks.

Lager and bread, they say could raise the dead. It reminds me of the menu at the Holiday Inn.

A couple slices of ham and a server who is slightly less passionate about mediocre remakes of classic westerns would have made our meal at Ground Round perfect, but aside from these minor nits I’m picking, I have little to complain about. Indeed, there have been times when I’ve been holed up in hotels after a long day on the road wishing for a decent restaurant within walking distance so I wouldn’t have to get back in my car to find something to eat. On non-blog related trips, I’d gladly pay a few dollars more to stay at a hotel with an onsite restaurant so I could have the luxury of not having to leave the building for dinner. While the Ground Round dining room was empty shortly after opening time during our Saturday morning visit, I bet both the dining and bar areas will soon be packed with weary travelers and perhaps even a few locals during the dinner and cocktail hours, if they’re not already.

That afternoon, the story seemed similar on the opposite side of Ohio when we rolled up to the Bennigan’s in Steubenville, which is situated just a few steps from the front door of a Best Western that’s no more than a couple years old. Like the Perrysburg Ground Round, it appears this site was picked with the hotel crowd in mind. Unlike the Ground Round, however, the Steubenville Bennigan’s is a freestanding structure, and is one of three prototype locations in the chain. (The other two are in North Dakota and Texas.) This location opened while I was researching my post about visits to three separate Bennigan’s locations in Michigan, and since then, the Bennigan’s chain has actually gotten a little bit smaller, as two of those Michigan Bennigan’s have closed, leaving only the Mt. Pleasant location open. All told, Bennigan’s is down to 11 locations in the US, and 15 more scattered around Latin America and the Middle East. There were close to 300 of them prior to widespread closures during the Great Recession. The Steubenville Bennigan’s is the only Ohio location, and it’s barely in Ohio, as you can see across the river into West Virginia from the parking lot.

An unusual sign at the Steubenville Bennigan's makes a 90 degree bend. 

Despite the brand’s recent struggles, Bennigan’s parent company, Legendary Restaurant Brands LLC seems to be actively marketing the chain. Menus receive seasonal changes and limited time offers. Their website promises several new locations are soon to open, and judging by the appearance of the inside of the Steubenville Bennigan’s a significant amount of money was spent designing and constructing the new Bennigan’s building. The decor felt vaguely familiar with nods to the brand’s heritage, including a logo printed on a patch of the chain’s trademark hexagonal tile near the front door, yet completely different from any of the ‘80s and ‘90s built Bennigan’s locations I’d visited previously. Laminate flooring and subway tile made the dining room feel modern, but with more than a few nods to the past in the form of collages of Bennigan’s imagery printed on wallpaper and framed photos of beloved menu items adorning the walls.

My beloved hexagonal tile lives on. 

The hostess sat us near the door of a dining room that was nearly half full despite it being well before 5 PM. In addition to Bennigan’s, Legendary Restaurant Brands LLC also owns the rights to the Steak and Ale restaurant brand. While there are no Steak and Ale locations operating, you’ll find a few of their menu items on a special section of the menu at Bennigan’s, and the Bennigan’s website is actively marketing Steak and Ale franchises to anyone who might have the interest and means to open a Steak and Ale of their own. I decided Hawaiian chicken from the Steak and Ale menu sounded decent for dinner, and Esmeralda opted for Bennigan’s famous chicken tenders. Thankfully our server in Steubenville was less chatty than her counterpart back at Ground Round, but as we sat waiting for our meals to arrive, we noticed two things. First our drinking glasses were noticeably dirty, with mysterious spots and streaks on their outsides, and that the restaurant’s manager was making an apology tour of multiple tables near us, attempting to make amends for shortcomings in the food and service while comping various menu items from each table’s tab. When our waitress returned with our order, we asked for new drinks in clean glasses and examined our meals with newly tempered expectations.

My Hawaiian chicken made the cover of the menu. I'm somebody now!

Steak and Ale was known for its steak, ale, and to a lesser extent, Hawaiian chicken.

My meal was decent enough. The pineapple rings and sweet marinade made the grilled chicken breast perfectly pleasant. The rice mixed with vegetable chunks was full of bright and unique flavors, and while my broccoli seemed to have been microwaved, it was at least seasoned nicely. It renewed my desire for someone to open a new Steak and Ale somewhere, preferably in springtime. Esmeralda said her chicken tenders tasted like they had been sitting under a heat lamp for a little too long, but nothing we were served was bad enough that we felt the need to summon the manager so he could atone for the sins of his staff. The Steubenville Bennigan’s served its intended purpose for us, providing a halfway decent meal to folks who had completed a long day on the road. The only difference between us and the typical customer was that Bennigan’s was our destination, not simply an impromptu stop on the way to somewhere else.

Authentic faux-Irish pub decor. 

Like a hotel-adjacent chain restaurant, spring is thought of by many to be merely a stop on the way to summer, but because of the temperate weather and the optimism of new life after a bleak and dreary winter, spring is my destination season every year. You might gather from my ramblings here that I’m a fan of unconventional destinations, and you’d be correct in that assumption, but there is something magical about early efforts at a comeback, whether or not that comeback proves successful. A down, but not out restaurant chain attempting to recapture their former glory adorns a familiar concept with bright and fresh new trappings and a healthy dose of optimism is as magical as springtime to me. Regardless of if these attempted second acts lead to an endless summer of newfound prosperity or a ruthless winter of defeat, I’m happy to experience them in spring when familiar surroundings feel fresh, bright, born anew, and ready to revive a restaurant brand that has languished after far too long of a winter. 

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I Hate Sundays

Sunday is my least favorite day of the week. Even though the vast majority of Sundays I’ve experienced have been free of school and work obligations, my brain won’t let me enjoy a Sunday for what it is. The prospect of the workweek, soon to begin anew looms over a Sunday, casting a shadow of unavoidable dread that constantly nags at me and eats away at my enjoyment of whatever Sunday activity in which I’m attempting to partake.

Since I spend my entire Sunday dreading it, one might contend that the day I really hate the most is Monday, not unlike a certain lazy cartoon cat, or an eponymous U.S. president who was assassinated on a Monday. However, once Monday rolls around, I’ve accepted my fate. I quickly settle into the routine of my workweek and make peace with the fact that the only way to the next weekend is through the coming week. With a week’s worth of menial tasks to distract me, it will be Friday evening again before I know it, and I’ll have a whole Saturday of carefree fun ahead of me.

Garfield's! You know, the place by the massage chairs!

After a weekend full of broken chain visits, I had one final stop to make before I headed home on a melancholy Sunday afternoon. St. Clairsville, Ohio is home to the Ohio Valley Mall, which itself is the refuge of a few notable businesses, not the least of which is a Garfield’s Restaurant and Pub, one of six surviving locations spread from northeast Pennsylvania to southwest Missouri. It’s a restaurant chain that was seemingly founded partially out of spite.

After a lifetime of making it a point to accomplish things he was told he couldn’t do, Vincent Orza opened Garfield's, his first restaurant. in Oklahoma City in 1984. In an interview, Orza claimed he opened the first Garfield’s to ensure those who said his restaurant wouldn’t be a success would be proven wrong, and seemingly, they were, at least for a couple of decades. During the casual dining craze of the ‘80s and ‘90s, the restaurant with its early 20th century spin on the “nail a bunch of random crap to the walls” style of decor and eclectic menu was a modest success, peaking with around 50 company-owned and franchised locations in 26 states, mostly attached to or near indoor shopping malls. The restaurant took its name not from a Monday-loathing head of state or comic strip feline, but from a fictional character devised by the fledgling restaurant’s marketing team. Casey Garfield, a restaurant mascot whose picture I cannot find anywhere on the internet, seemingly traveled the world to experience different cuisines to add them to the menu of his restaurant, which, in its heyday, boasted Tex-Mex, Italian, and Chinese-influenced offerings in addition to traditional American fare. 

I have yet to cease being surprised at what still exists. 

Downfall came for Garfield’s with the decline of the American mall, as it did for other mall-reliant chains like York Steak House and Morrison’s Cafeteria, and as malls lost stores and foot traffic declined, a growing list of Garfield’s locations became empty mall storefronts in ailing malls. But, like its surviving Garfield’s location, Ohio Valley Mall is an anomaly. I arrived there a few minutes before their Garfield’s opened and went for a mall walk to kill time ease my Sunday blues. I was both surprised and pleased to find a nicely maintained vibrant, reasonably healthy mall. Five of its six anchor store slots were occupied, which was impressive considering that the mall had lost three anchor stores, Sears, Kmart, and Elder-Beerman, in the past five years. All but the vacant Sears, which closed last summer, are now occupied by new tenants. There was even a Sam Goody still open for business in the mall, one of only two remaining US stores, and a broken chain location in its own right. I would have sworn that the now-closed Sam Goody in the now nearly vacant Horton Plaza Mall in San Diego was the last one, but true to the title of my very first Broken Chains post, which featured a picture of the Horton Plaza Sam Goody, you’d be surprised at what still exists. I know I was. 

Essentially the entire physical media selection at Sam Goody

I of course took a lap of Sam Goody, whose floor space was 80% T shirts, Funko Pops, and other inoffensive novelties, with the other 20% occupied by physical media, mostly movies on DVD and Blu-ray, with a few new LP records tucked in the back. Who would have guessed that vinyl would outlive all other physical audio formats? I pondered the holdout Sam Goody’s status as a PG-rated Spencer’s Gifts as I navigated the mall’s corridors to Garfield’s, now open for the day. I was among the first customers in the door late on that Sunday morning, and the hostess seated me in a booth that overlooked some gumball machines and the hibachi restaurant across the corridor.

The view out the window by my booth

The place felt modern, if a little bland

And there's a bar if that's the kind of thing you're into. 

This Garfield’s appeared to have shed its random junk on the walls decor, if it ever had it at all. The dining room was dimly lit, with mostly bare walls, few windows, and black drop ceiling that made the room feel darker than it actually was. A few framed posters of generic-looking food hung on the walls. Only one had a Garfield’s logo on it to remind me of where I was. The bar area was adorned only with the obligatory smattering of wall-mounted televisions, playing infomercials and sporting events, all without sound. My drab surroundings did little to ease my Sunday malaise. If Purgatory had a casual dining restaurant, it would look a lot like the St. Clairsville Garfield’s. Suddenly, someone fired up some ambient music to cut through the monotony. “Bastille Day,” a Rush deep cut from the oft-overlooked B side of their album, 2112, began to play, reminding me of the lunch I’d had at Spageddie’s on another gloomy Sunday at the tail end of a weekend road trip. I had just started to wonder if Sam Goody had any Rush LPs in stock when a server appeared to take my drink order. When she returned a few moments later with my Diet Pepsi, I ordered a Fire Strings Burger from a menu I suspected had been truncated, perhaps as the result of the fictional Casey Garfield suspending his fictional voyages around the world to learn more recipes. Maybe he mailed himself to Abu Dhabi, and never came back. Before returning to the kitchen, my server asked my preferred doneness by inquiring if I preferred my burger to have “Some pink or no pink.” I opted for some pink. There’s nothing worse than an overcooked burger. 

The entirety of the menu. No, lasagna wasn't an option. At least it was nicely printed.

 

A burger worth waiting for? 

It looked good, and tasted slightly worse. 

It took close to half an hour for my burger and fries to show up, despite a mostly empty dining room. Maybe a line cook or two had called in with cases of the Sunday blues. When it did arrie, the burger topped with what Garfield’s calls “Fire Strings,” breaded and deep fried bits of onion and jalapeños was hot off the grill, and the Fire Strings were straight out of the fryer. It was a great looking burger, but despite the presentation, it was disappointing. Even though the third pound-ish patty was cooked to a near-perfect medium, it tasted dry. I suspect the meat used to form the patty was extremely lean, which is unfortunate, because a little more fat in the meat would have transformed what was, at best, a so-so burger into a pretty good one. 

If you’re stuck at the mall on a Sunday, Garfield’s is probably a decent enough place to have a burger and a beer or two while the shopaholic in your life goes on a bender through their favorite mall stores, but it falls short of being a destination. There’s little, if anything to set Garfield’s apart from a Chili’s or Applebee’s. As malls began to fall out of favor, it would have been easy enough to ditch the part of the Garfield’s brand strategy that dictates locations be attached to malls, and attempt to open some freestanding restaurants, but I doubt the endeavor would have been successful without serious reinvention of the Garfield’s experience to set it apart in what is already a crowded, and increasingly unpopular field of casual dining restaurants. Whoever owns the Garfield’s brand these days apparently saw things the same way, as all six surviving Garfield’s are mall locations whose days are likely numbered. 

I don't think I've ever bought anything from a Macy's, and I was able to maintain that streak after walking through this one, despite the liquidation discounts. 

Malls that are healthy enough to support a medium-priced restaurant are a dying breed. Remember that mall-based Max and Erma’s I visited last Summer? It’s since closed, and I suspect the six remaining Garfield’s will do the same sooner rather than later as the malls that house them become less viable. In the case of the Ohio Valley Mall, its Macy’s is set to close in a few weeks, leaving a second empty anchor store, and if the two empty anchors aren’t rented out soon, reduced foot traffic could cause a domino effect that will bring about an ever-growing list of store closures that would threaten both Garfield’s and Sam Goody along with every other Ohio Valley Mall tenant. It’s a tale that’s as old as the internet, played out in dead and dying malls across the country to the point that a relatively healthy mall feels like a rarity. Any mall that is still remotely viable in the year 2020 is experiencing a metaphorical Sunday afternoon; while in a relatively comfortable position, things are sure to get worse for most malls in the short term before they get better. Anyone who owns or manages a mall in this position is sure to live in a state of dread five to seven days a week, which makes my one day per week of dread seem almost attractive by comparison.

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Sweet Love

When I describe my hobby of visiting locations of near-defunct restaurant chains to various friends and well-wishers, I’m frequently asked if I’ve written about chains that are currently in decline. Steak ‘n Shake is the one I’m asked about most frequently. My typical reply is that I prefer to seek out the forgotten, survivors of chains that seemingly met their collective demise years, if not decades ago. I’ll get around to writing a Steak ‘n Shake post eventually, but I plan on letting the dust settle on their decline first.

There are instances, however, where I make exceptions to this guideline and visit locations of a chain that is presently in rapid decline for fear that they may soon disappear completely, just as Don Pablo’s and Lone Star Steakhouse did shortly after I wrote about them. It is for this reason that I visited two Bakers Square locations just a couple weeks after their parent company, American Blue Ribbon Holdings, who also own Village Inn, filed for bankruptcy and closed 33 of the two chains' 129 restaurants leaving 84 Village Inns and 22 Bakers Squares in business, down from a peak somewhere over 400 locations total. It seems as likely as not that the more widespread Village Inn restaurant brand will survive a while longer, but the smaller Bakers Square chain seems more vulnerable in the face of bankruptcy and the decline of family restaurants in general.

Few restaurant chains have endured more name changes than Bakers Square, which was called Mrs. C’s when the first location opened in Des Moines, Iowa in 1969. Mrs. C’s was quickly acquired by Pillsbury, who on a restaurant chain shopping spree had purchased Burger King just a few years before. Under Pillsbury, Mrs. C’s became Poppin’ Fresh Pies and grew quickly with a doughy infusion of Pillsbury money and brand image. VICORP, owners of Village Inn, purchased Poppin' Fresh Pies from Pillsbury in 1983, and re-dubbed it Bakers Square, presumably after considering names like “Butchers Isosceles Triangle” and “Candlestick Makers Rhombus.” VICORP filed for bankruptcy in 2008, a year when corporate bankruptcies were commonplace, if not fashionable, and was purchased out of bankruptcy by American Blue Ribbon Holdings, who now, themselves have a bankruptcy to call their own. 

Bakers Square appears to have peaked at somewhere north of 200 locations in the early VICORP years, and once had a presence on the west coast, but the 22 locations that survive today are scattered around six midwestern states with more than a third of their locations in and around Chicago. My recent exploration of the last two Spudnut Shops in Ohio took me to Cleveland, and I took the opportunity to visit the last two Ohio Bakers Squares that are coincidentally also located in the Cleveland suburbs.

Bakers Square once had a presence in the area of Metro Detroit I’ve called home off and on for the past 12 years, but I originally moved to the area in the midst of the 2008 VICORP bankruptcy, and all the nearby locations had already closed, leaving faux-Prairie School style buildings with distinctive hip roofs behind. Leo’s Coney Island, a local Detroit chain moved into a couple of the old Bakers Squares near me, making only minimal changes to the buildings, so both the exterior and interior of the Parma Heights, Ohio Bakers Square were familiar to me upon my arrival there. 

Cleveland is beautiful in February when the snow starts to melt and show the cracked asphalt.

The puns start coming...

...and they don't stop coming

This whole flippy thing was lousy with pie puns. 

I found the parking lot and dining room crowded at lunchtime on a Saturday, but I was quickly shown to one of the few open booths after walking in. I explored an extensive menu, settling on a club sandwich when the server came for my order. I flipped through a thick selection of cards on a small stand at my table while I waited for the arrival of my sandwich. Bakers Square is, perhaps best known for its pies, and each of the cards showed a different variety of pie and a Bob’s Burgers Burger of the Day-level pun about each one. I had decided to order a slice of “Happy to have the blues” blueberry pie to complete my meal when my server arrived with a club sandwich that was laughably constructed. 

See how some of the bread is huge and some is tiny? It was maddening!

I should pause for a moment here to describe what a club sandwich should look like for the benefit of those of you who are not members of the club. A club sandwich is constructed of three pieces of bread, usually toasted. The space between the bottom two pieces usually contains turkey, while the space between the top two pieces contains ham and/or bacon. Lettuce, tomato, and mayonnaise are usually in their somewhere too. The sandwich is then cut diagonally twice to create four roughly equally sized triangular quadrants, each of which is held together by a single extra long toothpick. 

The sandwich quickly devolved into chaos. 

The club sandwich I received at Bakers Square had all the prerequisite ingredients, and even included both bacon and ham, but things went wrong in the kitchen when it was time to make those two all-important diagonal cuts. Two separate problems in the cutting process rendered my sandwich a ridiculous mess. For one, the cuts, which should have been made corner to corner, converging somewhere in the neighborhood of the center point of the bread were made incorrectly, so that the intersection of the two cuts was way off to one side. Additionally, the cuts, which should have been made perpendicular to the cutting surface were made at an angle, so that the face of the cross-section of each mini sandwich sloped gradually from top to bottom. The end result of this slapdash sandwich surgery was that none of the twelve triangles of bread were anywhere near the same size, and even with structural toothpicks, the sandwich was clumsy to eat, and no single bite contained all of the sandwich fillings. To make matters worse, the ham had been shredded into narrow strips, and would have been more at home in a chef’s salad than on a sandwich, and the little bits of porcine confetti tended to fall out of you breathed in the vague direction of the sandwich. I gave up and ate my crumbling pile of bread and meat with a fork, and told myself that the pie would be better. 

It was really good pie. 

A card on the table informed me that Bakers Square’s pies had won over 300 blue ribbons from an organization known as the American Pie Council. I took this as a good sign regarding the pie. How could a pie-related organization, which for all I knew, could be a subsidiary of Bakers Square’s parent company mislead me about the quality of pie? I ordered my slice of blueberry pie with a scoop of ice cream when my server returned to clear the remnants of my botched sandwich, and she soon returned once more with a plate of redemption. The blueberry pie was no less messy than the sandwich, but unlike the geometric, orderly club sandwich, a blueberry pie is meant to be an oozing, stain-inducing puddle of delicious chaos, and delicious it was. The crust even tasted as if it had been made from scratch and was enough to make the good slice of pie a great one. 

I would drive back to Cleveland for this pie right now with only the slightest suggestion. 

With a stomach full of the extremes of culinary ineptitude and excellence, I surveyed my surroundings while awaiting the arrival of my bill. The interior of the restaurant had clearly been remodeled in this century, but likely sometime before the 2008 bankruptcy, as the booths and carpet were beginning to show their age. A trip to the restroom revealed the true age of the building however, as the tile on the floors and walls appeared to date from sometime before 1980. It was clear from the age of the building and average age of the crowd filling the dining room that this Bakers Square had been a local favorite for a long time, and was popular enough to be among the last in business. 

2006 dining room

1976 bathroom

The same seemed to be the case at the second Bakers Square I visited, this time across town in Mentor, Ohio. I found the dining room no less busy at 3 PM the same day after finding my way inside. Curiously, though this location’s dining room was roughly the same size as its sibling in Parma Heights, it’s kitchen appeared much larger from the outside. It even had its own small loading dock. I suspect that this location is used as a commissary, perhaps to supply pies and other prepared foods to both it and the other nearby location and likely originally additional Cleveland-area Bakers Squares that have since closed. 

This one is a little prettier than the last.

If you don't look at the loading dock around back.

I don't know about best, but they're right up there. 

This time around, I ordered breakfast, which is served all day. Per Broken Chains tradition, I ordered a pile of potatoes, eggs, cheese, and meat known as a skillet. I was pleased when my server asked how I wanted my eggs, which puts Bakers Square ahead of both Country Kitchen and Lucky Steer, and she soon returned with a breakfast skillet that was of above average quality, but unremarkable other than the fact that the bacon and sausage were whole and not chopped up and mixed in with everything else. Because no meal, including a 3 PM breakfast, is complete at Bakers Square without pie, I ordered up a slice of banana cream, which, like the blueberry I’d had earlier in the day, had a great homemade taste, though I found myself wishing I’d ordered another slice of blueberry. 

Breakfast skillet and biscuits for early dinner. 

That blueberry pie in particular makes the decline, and seemingly inevitable demise of Bakers Square feel like more of a loss than that of other doomed family restaurant chains. Even in the face of bankruptcy and incompetent sandwich preparation, Bakers Square pies remain a high quality, sought-after product. When I was paying my tab at both restaurants, seemingly half the people in line with me were only there to pick up whole pies to go. They also seemed to skew younger than the people sitting and eating in the dining room. Given the aging dine-in customer base, It seems doubtful that Bakers Square has much of a future as a full service restaurant, but hopefully at least the pie business survives bankruptcy.

Banana cream pie, decent, but made me wish for more blueberry. 

I could envision a future in which smaller Bakers Square-branded fast casual locations open low-overhead in strip mall slots, selling whole pies, slices, and maybe a limited menu of more carefully prepared sandwiches. Pies could be baked in-store, or supplied by a central commissary in markets where locations with in-house production facilities, like the one in Mentor still exist. In my experience the pie is the main draw, so why not get rid of the outdated family restaurant business model and focus on Bakers Square's main strength, the award-winning pies? The appeal would reach beyond the current, rapidly aging crowd, and attract a younger clientele, who typically have less free time and less disposable income to spend on a full-service meal at a sit-down restaurant, but who still value high quality goods. A reinvention of the brand to appeal to a new generation of customers would at least give the Bakers Square brand a fighting chance at surviving, and perhaps even thriving. 

I'd buy pie from Anita Baker, and so should you. 

Longtime Broken Chains readers will recall that when I suggest a restaurant chain reinvent itself, I suggest they hire a celebrity spokesperson like Rollie Fingers or Geddy Lee whose name can be used to create a pun on the restaurant’s name. For Bakers Square, a chain whose marketing seems to regularly employ pun-based humor, I considered both Huey Lewis, who’d perform a pie-based parody of “Hip to be Square” in Bakers Square commercials, before I briefly moved on to MST3K fan favorite character actor Joe Don Baker, until I settled on singer-songwriter Anita Baker, who would proclaim in commercials, “Anita (I need a) Bakers Square pie!” or that Bakers Square gives you, the customer the best that they’ve got. The ad copy writes itself, really. According to Wikipedia, Anita Baker lives in the Detroit suburbs, so maybe I’ll suggest all of this to her if I ever run into her at Meijer. As for Bakers Square, I can only hope that some Blue Ribbon Holdings executive stumbles upon my blog, and sees my pun-based suggestion for reinventing Bakers Square. For all I know the future of the brand may depend on it.

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