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| Detail from a 1969 Lorain phone book ad |
Above is the clever ad announcing exactly that. It ran in the Lorain Journal on August 1, 1969. As you can see from the ad, Elyria had the first Burger King locally.
As I noted back in this post, Burger King was playing catch-up (no pun intended) with its burger rivals. McDonald’s had been in Lorain since late June 1960; Sandy’s on Meister Road followed in June 1965; even Casey’s was already a hit in Lorain, opening its West 21st Street store in December 1968.
But Burger King has had the last laugh when it comes to longevity. Its restaurants on Fairless Drive and Leavitt Road are still thriving, decades after they opened, while all of the original McDonald’s restaurants on West Erie, Colorado Avenue and North Ridge are long gone. And of course, Sandy’s and Casey’s have been relegated to the burger dustbin of history.
Anyway, I enjoy the occasional Burger King hamburger as a special treat, especially since the service seems faster these days than what you experience at the home of the Golden Arches. And since I’m a big Tim Hortons fan, I like to patronize its parent company. (Burger King bought the iconic Canadian coffee & donut restaurant chain back in 2014.)
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| The Fairless Drive restaurant this past weekend |
4 comments:
I was a big fan of the Whaler, BK's giant fish sandwich.
It’s funny how that Burger King has done so well after that shopping center has had such a horrible history. The Kroger was vacant for years before Save A Lot opened in part of it, Kmart closed and turned to Builders Square, then they liquidated and it stood empty for years before being demolished.
...I had visited a Burger King once before the one on Leavitt Road opened - in Virginia (may have even been DC) in 1967 - and I had been hoping one would show up. Managed to harangue my Dad into taking us one Saturday afternoon just after they opened, and I was in heaven, have always considered them better than McDs.
A Tim Horton's in Lorain would be great!
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