Lorain A&W Root Beer Ad – May 26, 1964

One of my memories of Vermilion from when I was a kid was that my parents took us a few times to the A&W Root Beer stand there on U.S. Route 6. (It was located where Wendy’s is now.)

I first wrote about the Vermilion A&W here.

What’s strange is that Lorain had its own A&W Root Beer stand on Route 6 too, a few miles to the east of the Vermilion one. It was located at West Erie Avenue and Madison.

Here’s an ad for that Lorain stand, which ran in the Journal on May 26, 1964.

I don’t remember the Lorain A&W at all. It could be because Dad seemed to avoid that stretch of West Erie entirely, always using the W. 21st Street shortcut to save time whenever we were going west of Lorain.

Does anyone remember the Lorain A&W?

The Vermilion one is well-remembered, and the subject of a recent series of reminisces on the “You know you’re from Vermilion if....” Facebook page.

By the way, I happened to be in Windsor, Ontario a few days ago and passed an A&W Restaurant. The A&W operations in Canada are completely separate from that of the company based in the United States. (Read about the very successful Canuck version of A&W here.)

That got me to wondering: are there any A&Ws still in Ohio?

The corporate website answered my question. There are restaurants in Marion, Columbus, Whitehall and Zanesville. (I remember there was one north of campus on High Street when I was down at Ohio State in the late 70s. There was also one in Ashland, which I wrote about here.)

Click here to visit the A&W website to learn about the history of the chain, which is celebrating its 100th Anniversary in 2019.