THE LAST STAND
HUNDREDS FLOCK TO JOHN’S DOGGIE SHOP ON CONCHESTER FOR ONE LAST TASTE OF HOT DOGS & THE ‘BOSS WITH THE SAUCE’
UPPER CHICHESTER » There were tears, hugs and bloated cheeks Saturday as fans of John’s Doggie Shop came to pay their final respects Saturday before the legendary eatery on the Conchester Highway closed its doors for good.
A casualty of the Route 322 expansion project, the Delaware County staple, which once called downtown Chester home before popping up in Upper Chichester, had a line of hungry patrons stretching to the highway from 6:30 a.m. until supplies ran dry at 3.
It was a bittersweet reunion as visitors, whose patronage stretched all three generations of the Eleutheriou family, came for one final taste of “the Boss With the Sauce.”
“It’s a sad day today,” said Maureen DeLong, of Boothwyn, who said John’s has been a staple for 50 years. “I came here for their friendship and their personalities.”
And you can’t about the famous she added.
Longtime friend and former owner Pete Eleutheriou, 79, took the business over from his father, John’s Doggie Shop’s namesake, and later passed the Chester and Upper Chi locations down to his sons John and George respectively. Saturday he mingled with guests, family and lifelong friends as son George sweated away on the grill cranking out orders by the hundreds.
Sitting with lifelong friends Jean and Rich Francis,
“I never had another job my whole life, I grew up in the store. How many other businesses do you know that lasted three generations? They’re few and far between.”
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forget sauce, who have been married for 58 years, Pete said he has been friends with Jean since they were in the third grade. Rich’s mother even worked for Eleutheriou for a time.
“They’ve never changed,” Jean Francis said. “They got better.”
When asked to reflect upon her final bites inside the shop, Jean put it simply: “Sad, real sad.”
It’s been a source of pride for Eleutheriou to see the business first transfer to him and later to his sons. From starting out sweeping the floors to gaining more and more responsibilities until he was the owner himself, he said of the guests cramming into the shop on Saturday, “this is our family.”
“I never had another job my whole life, I grew up in the store,” Eleutheriou said. “How many other businesses do you know that lasted three generations? They’re few and far between.”
Duffy Sinnott and wife Jamie, who once lived in Linwood, drove up from Stafford, Va., with their three children – Josh, 11, Ella, 5, and Mollie, 4 – for the first time with the whole family.
“We used to come here on the regular, my son drove with George on the racetrack at Cecil County Dragway,” Sinnott said.
Josh, who was just 6 years old when he strapped up for a spin around the track, remembers the moment. With mouth full of cheeseburger, he cracked a smile and flashed a thumb’s up.
The Eleutheriou family’s 69 years in the hot dog business began when John bought the Texas Lunch restaurant at 100 E. Seventh St., Chester, in 1948. The new owner quickly endeared himself with the city’s blue and white collar workers alike, keeping the crowded 8 footby-8 foot eatery open 20 hours a day to cater to shift workers from the booming industrial town’s many plants along with downtown office workers and shoppers.
The Conchester store opened in 1978 when George’s father Pete and a cousin bought the former Wolf’s Restaurant. It was one of five satellite stores – along with locations in Media; Wilmington and Newark, Del.; and
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