Make that to go

Dave Thomas' original Wendy's Old Fashioned Hamburgers, 257 East Broad Street in Columbus, Ohio, will close this Friday after years of so-so sales.

Wendy's #1 opened in November 1969. The main problem, apparently, is that downtown Columbus closes at sunset, and the store does no business at night. Worse, there's very little parking, and there's no room to put in a drive-thru. (Wendy's #2, opened a year later, does have a drive-thru.)

There are plenty of Wendy's locations in and around Columbus, and all the staff of #1 will be offered jobs at other stores; the accumulated memorabilia will be relocated to Wendy's HQ in nearby Dublin. (Side note: The largest city in the US without a Wendy's is San Francisco. Go figure.)

Among other firsts:

• Colonel Sanders' original eatery is in Corbin, Kentucky, but the first official Kentucky Fried Chicken location was in Salt Lake City, where Sanders in 1952 persuaded restaurateur Leon "Pete" Harman to try out his recipe. It was torn down in 2004; Harman still had his name over the door.

• Ray Kroc opened his first McDonald's in Des Plaines, Illinois, in 1955, after buying the name from the McDonald brothers, who had started a small Southern California chain way back in 1939. It is now a museum. There is, however, a 1953 McDonald's still in operation in Downey, California.

• The first Burger King was built in Miami in 1954. There were no Whoppers, however, until 1957.

• Fast-food veteran Glen Bell opened an eatery in Downey, California in 1962, less than three miles from McDonald's. It was called Bell's Drive-In; eventually it became Taco Bell.

• Carl Karcher started out with a single cart, and in a couple of years had four hot-dog stands in Los Angeles. His first full-fledged drive-in restaurant opened in 1945 in Anaheim, California; in 1956 Karcher put up two smaller restaurants in Orange County and dubbed them "Carl's Jr."

• Karcher's firm, CKE Restaurants, acquired the Hardee's chain in 1997. Wilbur Hardee's first eatery was a walk-up in Rocky Mount, North Carolina, which opened in 1960.

• The first Arby's was opened by Leroy and Forrest Raffel in Boardman, Ohio in 1964. "Arby's" is simply a variant on "R.B.'s," though R.B., says the company, stands for "Raffel Brothers" and not "Roast Beef."
  

I definitely picked a lousy day to skip breakfast.

Posted at 7:41 AM to Worth a Fork