performance. I was making more money for them than they had ever thought possible.
One of the local restaurateurs in Wilmington had taken note of my success at the YMCA, and, after a number of meetings, he convinced me to quit my job to go to work for him. The results were nearly catastrophic. It turned out that we just didn’t get along very well. After a few months in this job I was dismissed one evening after a particularly difficult confrontation. I drove back to the farm that evening and broke the news to Nancy. It was particularly troubling because we had very little money left and Nancy was pregnant again.
While at the YMCA, I had noticed a restaurant across the street that seemed to be busy twenty-four hours a day. It was called Toddle House and it was part of a chain of quick-service, short-order restaurants that enjoyed significant growth in the ’30s and ’40s. The first White Castle opened in 1921 in Wichita, Kansas. The founder of White Castle, Billy Ingram, is generally acknowledged as being the father of the hamburger. His very successful White Castle concept was cloned by a number of imitators, one of which was Toddle House. By 1949, when I began to look for a business of my own, food-service chains such as these had become well established and were operating very successfully.
Customers in those restaurants were served at a straight-line restaurant counter with only ten seats. All the food preparation was done behind the counter and in front of the customers. Clean stainless steel equipment was used throughout. The menu consisted of short orders and breakfast items such as orange juice, eggs, bacon, sausage, pancakes, waffles, toast, coffee, and, of course, the main feature was hamburgers.
In the 1920s and 1930s, White Castle and their numerous imitators offered variations on a basic theme. Toddle House was one of a number of restaurant chains piggybacking the styling and success of the original White Castle. Their restaurants were clean and efficient, and they delivered a great price-value package to their customers. Open twenty-four hours a day, they proved to be popular places to go for quick, affordable food any time. Run properly and in good locations, they were very profitable operations.
It seemed that the Toddle House was busy every time I went by, no matter what time of day or night. The ten seats were full most of the time, and often there were people standing up waiting to be served. It looked like a sound business to me and I began to think that a similar operation could be equally successful.
Next door to the Toddle House was a vacant building that had once been a bicycle repair shop. I introduced myself to the landlady and found that she was very anxious to rent the facility for three hundred dollars a month. I felt that if I copied the Toddle House concept, I could operate a successful competing business of my own right next door to it.
I signed a lease for the building and designed a food-service concept that was just a little bit fancier than the Toddle House, but essentially the same kind of operation. Instead of putting in a straight-line counter, I decided to install a horseshoe-shaped counter with fourteen seats. I decided to make the interior of the restaurant much different than the Toddle House. Instead of having a small space for food preparation and customer seating, I designed a much larger interior. The production area would consist of stainless steel tables, a fryer, gas grill, refrigerator, exhaust hood, coffee maker, and drink station.
I felt the larger area inside the restaurant could be made very attractive by using linoleum flooring and wallpaper. This would give the customers a pleasant view of the food preparation processes and provide a certain amount of ambiance. In the event the seats were fully occupied when customers arrived, I had comfortable seating to accommodate the overflow.
I installed one of the first air-conditioning units that were just then coming into the commercial market. Air-conditioning was still a novel customer luxury in retail shops. This gave me a distinct competitive advantage over the Toddle House, which didn’t have one. I remembered the discomfort of trying to sleep in hot hotel rooms, and I was fully aware that eating in hot restaurants wasn’t any fun either.
All of this scrambling to design, build, and open the restaurant took place in the summer and fall of 1949. Several other important events were taking place at the same time. Our second child, Lynne, arrived on September 16 of that year. While I was busy designing, planning, and building the restaurant, Nancy took on the challenge of running a bigger household. It wasn’t easy raising two babies during a time when our prospects for the future were so uncertain.
During Christmas week in 1949, I was busy putting the finishing touches on the restaurant. With plans to open for business right after New Year’s Day, my time was spent hiring a crew, setting up an inventory of food and supplies, and attending to a host of other details. I decided to call the restaurant the Colonial Inn, and planned to keep it open around the clock; I never put a lock on the door. The logo on the sign outside the front door depicted a colonial lady stirring a pot over an open hearth. The sign was lit on both sides, and our restaurant was located at 700 Delaware Avenue. It soon became a favorite eating spot. The three working shifts would be from 7:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m., another one from 3:00 p.m. to 11:00 p.m., and the graveyard shift from 11:00 p.m. to 7:00 a.m. We opened for business on January 4, 1950.
One of my former employees at the YMCA, Audrey Reeder, became my chief lieutenant. She and her husband Herman moved into the upstairs apartment. One of us was always available. Audrey or I was required to pull the graveyard shift when someone failed to show up for work. It wasn’t always easy to find reliable and experienced help willing to work the late-night shift. I spent quite a few nights cooking hamburgers and short orders.
The good news was that from the day we opened, the Colonial Inn was a success. Hamburgers, French fries, short orders, waffles, eggs, pancakes, tenderloin steaks, and coffee at the Colonial Inn became very popular items, and our reputation as a good place to eat spread rapidly. At one point, we had the distinction of being recommended by Duncan Hines, one of the first fast-food writers and restaurant critics.
During the first two months of operation I was able to develop and train a good staff that I could rely upon. In March, Nancy and I and the two babies drove to Miami to spend a ten-day holiday with Dr. and Mrs. Nichol. I enjoyed going back to our favorite part of the world. Sunny Miami always had a magical appeal, and we were hopeful that someday we could move there permanently. Returning to the restaurant in Wilmington, we found that things had gone very smoothly in our absence. In fact, I was hardly missed. Sales had been good, and I was pleased with the results. Business was picking up faster than I anticipated, and with profits building up, it appeared that our financial crisis might be over. It felt good to begin paying off some of our debts.
With the Colonial Inn operating on a profitable basis, my confidence level returned. Before long I was deeply involved in developing plans to open a second restaurant. These were pretty heady times for me! The Colonial Inn took in $90,000 in sales during its first year, and out of that I was able to net $15,000, which seemed to be all the money there was in the whole world. These numbers don’t seem like very much nowadays, but in the 1940s, this was big time!
The money part of it was great, but so was the sense of accomplishment that came with opening a successful business of my own. I was twenty-three years old when I opened for business, and the success I enjoyed simply reinforced my confidence and determination to become a very successful restaurateur. This was what I was trained for, and this was the only business I knew anything about.
One never knows what is possible until they step out into the foray and try it for themselves. Fear makes you stay unless courage propels you forward. The Colonial Inn whetted my appetite for growing in the restaurant business, and I was anxious to keep moving. I had no idea how far it would take me, but I was ready to give it a try.
