Burger Chef: The Original Happy Meal Pioneer
You probably never realized that McDonald’s Happy Meal wasn’t actually the first of its kind. Burger Chef, the forgotten pioneer of the concept, was the original happy meal chain with the OG toy-and-burger combo that became super successful back in the mid 1900s with 1,200 locations, but by 1981 they had closed their doors. Unfortunately, the restaurant chain began to decline after a tragic incident in the 1970s when several employees were kidnapped from one of the restaurants and were found murdered, which led to bad publicity and alleged mismanagement causing Burger Chef to be sold to Hardee’s in 1982. Founded in 1954, Burger Chef was once a very popular fast food chain that had over 1,000 locations during its prime and was famous for introducing the concept of the “Fun Meal,” but unfortunately in 1968, the chain was sold to General Foods Corporation which eventually led to its transformation into Hardee’s in 1982, with the last Burger Chef restaurant closing in 1996.
Howard Johnson’s: America’s First Restaurant Giant
Howard Johnson’s was the largest restaurant chain in the U.S. throughout the 1960s and 1970s, with more than 1,000 combined company-owned and franchised outlets. During the 1950s and 1960s, travelers loved to see the restaurant’s orange roof and steeple materializing in the distance – a scene that played out often, considering it boasted over 1,000 locations nationwide, filled with promises of comfort food like fried clam strips, frankfurters, chicken pot pies, and 28 different flavors of thick ice cream, including tastes like banana, fruit salad, caramel fudge, and peanut brittle, and after a filling meal, patrons could recover from their food coma in one of the company’s motor lodges. The chain that once defined American dining slowly crumbled as consumer preferences shifted toward faster service.
Howard Johnsons’ popularity and large-scale footprint made it the largest restaurant chain of its time and America’s very first giant restaurant chain – later to be beaten out by McDonald’s. Through the 1960s and 70s, Howard Johnson’s was recognized as the largest restaurant chain in America and was best known for its delicious 28 flavours of ice cream and noticeable orange-roofed buildings, but despite its popularity, the brand began to decline in the 1970s due to changes in dining habits, and by 2017, the last stand-alone restaurant closed.
Arthur Treacher’s: From 826 Locations to Nearly Gone
At the peak of its popularity in the late 1970s, Arthur Treacher’s had 826 stores, but as of 2025, there are only four stand-alone Arthur Treacher’s locations remaining. This fish-and-chips empire started with genuine British authenticity – in 1969, Malin’s sold the exclusive rights to their recipe to Arthur Treacher’s, and the chain kept the same recipe and cooking methods that had originated in 19th century London, thus their slogan “the original”. The chain purchased the rights to Arthur Treacher (1894–1975), an English character actor typecast as “the perfect butler” for his performances as Jeeves in several Shirley Temple films, and at the time the chain was founded, Treacher was best known as the announcer and sidekick to Merv Griffin on The Merv Griffin Show, and although Treacher never confirmed whether he had a financial involvement in the restaurants, he was “a spokesman for the restaurant chain in its early years” and sometimes visited the restaurants, arriving in a red double-decker bus.
The “Cod Wars” between the UK and Iceland during the 1970s caused cod prices to double, so Mrs. Paul’s responded by replacing Icelandic cod in Arthur Treacher’s recipe with less expensive pollock, which exacerbated tensions with franchisees – some of whom had already withheld a total of $5 million in royalties for what they perceived to be a steadily declining level of service. With that location’s reopening, there are now only two standalone Arthur Treacher’s from a chain that once numbered over 800 during its 1970s heyday, and the new owner, George Simon, at first had no plans to keep this building an Arthur Treacher’s, figuring he’d bought the property as a real estate investment, buying the store from Ben Vittoria, who shut it amid the pandemic in 2021 and was a longtime Arthur Treacher’s operator who hung on to what was for almost two years the last standalone location.
Gino’s Hamburgers: When NFL Fame Meets Fast Food
The hamburger joint was founded in 1959 when Colts captain Gino Marchetti joined forces with owners Joe Campanella, Louis Fisher, and Alan Ameche, and the #dreamteam went on to found 359 locations, but Marriott Corporation scooped up the chain in 1982 and rebranded the locations into Roy Rogers Restaurants, with the final Gino’s closing in 1986. What made this chain special wasn’t just its football connection, but how it leveraged celebrity sports figures before that became commonplace in fast food marketing. Football Hall of Famer Gino Marchetti opened the first Gino’s Hamburgers in 1957, and by the 70s, he was able to boast over 300 locations, but in the early 1980s he sold the chain to the Marriott hotel chain, which quickly converted all the Gino’s into Roy Rogers, though Marchetti returned to the restaurant business in 2010, opening up a new Gino’s location.
Henry’s Hamburgers: The McDonald’s Beater That Couldn’t
Henry’s performed quite well in this regard, at one time beating out McDonald’s with 200 locations in the early 1960s, but sadly, the Golden Arches and other fast-food burger chains have bested it since, and now just one Henry’s Hamburgers lives on in its origin city of Benton Harbor, Michigan. By 1956, Chicago alone was home to thirty-five Henry’s locations, and across the U.S., there were more than 200 of them, and Henry’s was well known for its popular slogan, “Aren’t you hungry for a Henry’s?” The brand offered $0.12 burgers, once again exemplifying the beautiful food-for-all mentality behind so many of these defunct old fast food chains. Back when twelve cents could actually get you a decent burger, Henry’s was living proof that value didn’t mean sacrificing taste.
Henry’s began to falter in the 1970s, maybe due to a general failure to compete with evolving fast food brands, for instance, it never adopted the drive-thru window method, and it didn’t have anything like the substantial ad campaigns put out by the big-name franchises like Burger King, but luckily, there is still one location remaining today, so you can check out the old-school nostalgia for yourself.
Pup ‘N’ Taco: The Hotdog-Taco Hybrid Pioneer
Pup ‘N’ Taco was a privately-owned chain of fast-food restaurants in Southern California, with its headquarters based in Long Beach, California, and the business was begun by Russell Wendell in 1956 as a drive-in restaurant that served tacos and hot dogs, and at the time Russell owned a chain of successful doughnut stores in Los Angeles – Big DoNut – which featured gigantic doughnuts atop a drive-in bakery, with the first officially branded Pup ‘N’ Taco opened in Pasadena, California in 1965, and the menu consisted of tacos, tostadas, pastrami sandwiches, burgers, several varieties of hot dog (the “pup” in Pup ‘N’ Taco) and french fries. The concept seems bizarre by today’s standards, but this combination restaurant somehow made perfect sense in the laid-back California culture of the sixties and seventies. Ninety-nine stores were bought by Taco Bell in 1984, effectively ending the history of the chain, however, three operations in Albuquerque, New Mexico were not included in the deal and two still exist today as Pop ‘N’ Taco.
Red Barn: The Barn-Shaped Burger Experience
Red Barn, known for its fun and unique barn-shaped restaurants, operated from 1961 until the 1980s, and the chain declined in popularity as it was sold off and eventually dissolved, with the last known locations closing by the late 1980s, and this fantastic chain was famous for its Big Barney and Barnbuster burgers combined with its unique architecture of buildings, and it was certainly a memorable spot that’ll stay in the heart of fans forever. They started sprouting in Dayton, Ohio, circa the 1960s, and when the hungry hit, people were encouraged to hit the Red Barn, and the grub was your average fast food consisting of a salad bar, fried chicken, fish sandwiches, and the piece de resistance, juicy hamburgers and cheeseburgers, with the two biggest sellers including the double-decker, triple bun Big Barney, which resembled today’s Big Macs, and the Barnbuster, which was similar to a Quarter Pounder or Whopper.
Plenty of folks were able to get their hands on these signature sandwiches during the mid to late 20th century, as the chain grew to over 300 locations across 19 states and even in parts of Canada and Australia, but the brand has since kicked the can, becoming utterly defunct after its last locations closed in 1988.
Kenny Rogers Roasters: The Celebrity Chef Chain That Moved to Asia
Kenny Rogers Roasters, a chain that the singer started with pal and former KFC mogul John Y. Brown in 1991, probably became most renowned as a plot device in a 1996 “Seinfeld” episode, in which the eccentric Kramer hangs a “Bad Chicken” banner outside his apartment to protest the restaurant’s sleep-depriving neon sign, and by show’s end, the character drops his complaints when he becomes addicted to KRR’s rotisserie chicken, but in real life, Kenny Rogers got good reviews for its cuisine, but the chain found it tough going in a market crowded with competitors, and it went bankrupt in 1998 and eventually was sold to Nathan’s, the hot dog stand chain, with today, only one U.S. outlet remaining in Ontario, Calif., but oddly, however, the brand, which is now owned by a Malaysian company, is going great guns in Asia, with at least 100 franchises. The last Kenny Rogers Roasters operating in North America was located in the Ontario Mills mall in Ontario, California and closed on December 31, 2011, and the 2008 purchase agreement allowed for Nathan’s Famous and Miami Subs to continue selling Kenny Rogers Roasters items in their restaurants.
Despite the chain’s end in the United States, Kenny Rogers Roasters continues to flourish in Asia under the ownership of Berjaya Group, and an article published by Time.com in 2011 reported that Kenny Rogers Roasters had grown to almost 140 restaurants across Asia.
Lum’s: The Beer-Steamed Hotdog Specialists
Lum’s was founded in 1956 in Miami Beach, Florida, by Stuart and Clifford S. Perlman when they purchased Lum’s hot dog stand for $10,000, and over the next few years, the Perlman brothers opened three additional Lum’s restaurants, for a total of four by 1961, with Clifford Perlman, in addition to owning Lum’s, resigning his position as president of Southern Wood Industries, Inc., to work full-time for Lum’s, and under the brothers, Lum’s began aggressively expanding and franchising with the signature item being hot dogs steamed in beer. What happened: Famous for its beer-soaked hot dogs, Lum’s first appeared in Miami Beach and gained popularity through the ’70s, with nearly 400 locations across the country at its peak, and the company was doing well enough to go public in 1969, but a couple of years later, the restaurant chain was sold to John Y. Brown Jr., who was head of Kentucky Fried Chicken at the time, and while KFC flourished, Lum’s struggled, with the chain sold again in 1978 but still couldn’t turn things around and ultimately filed for bankruptcy in 1982.
Wienerwald had overextended itself and was forced to file for bankruptcy in 1982, and two Jahn-controlled Lum’s franchises were also forced to close all of their 70 Lum’s locations and file for bankruptcy, with the original Lum’s location closing in 1983, and for a time, there was only one Lum’s operating, in Bellevue, Nebraska. In 2010 a Lum’s opened in Seekonk, Massachusetts, but later closed, leaving the Nebraska restaurant as the sole location, and the Bellevue location closed on May 28, 2017.
Carrols: The Yellow Slug Mascot Chain
Carrols was fast food chain established back in the 1960s and had a yellow slug as their mascot, and the chain offered lean beef, high fiber buns, and low-fat cheese, but a bad chain of events led the company to file for bankruptcy in 1987. Sometimes you had to wonder what marketing genius thought a slug would be the perfect mascot to make people hungry for burgers. This was during an era when fast food chains were desperately trying to stand out with unique branding and gimmicks, but apparently even health-conscious menu items couldn’t save a chain whose mascot looked more like garden pest than food mascot. The yellow slug became a symbol of how even the most well-intentioned fast food concepts could fail spectacularly when paired with questionable marketing decisions.
Initially a part of the Tastee-Freez company, Carrols operated in the 1960s and 1970s. The chain represented an early attempt at healthier fast food options, decades before that became a major trend, but the timing just wasn’t right for American consumers who weren’t yet ready to embrace health-conscious fast food alternatives.
These old-school chains remind us that the fast food landscape was once far more diverse and experimental than today’s standardized offerings. They dared to try unusual combinations, quirky mascots, and regional specialties that reflected local tastes and cultural moments. While most failed to survive the competitive pressures and corporate consolidations that shaped modern fast food, their stories capture a time when entrepreneurial spirit and regional identity still had a place at America’s dinner table. What would you have chosen – a beer-steamed hotdog from Lum’s or a fish sandwich from Arthur Treacher’s?
