Doggie Diner revival running into hurdle with loss of investor
It took 10 months and $10,000 for Kip Atchley to secure an original Doggie Diner dog head, a 7foottall smirking dachshund that is the bestknown relic from the bygone Bay Area fastfood chain. His goal: to bring Doggie Diner back to life.
The Napa resident started planning the Doggie Diner revival a decade ago. He acquired the trademark rights, drafted the business plans and even found a location, but then a key investor pulled out of the project after losing property during the 2016 fire that swept through Lake County.
Atchley isn’t giving up, though. He envisions a new Doggie Diner as not just a restaurant but a tourist destination in Napa.
“We want to give somebody something fun to do here other than just wine tasting,” he said.
From 1948 to 1986, there were roughly 30 Doggie Diner locations throughout San Francisco, Oakland and other Bay Area cities. Families loved them for hot dogs, hamburgers, pastrami sandwiches and chili — and the giant fiberglass dachshund heads that stood outside each restaurant. One remains near
Ocean Beach and has been declared a historical landmark by the city.
Atchley knew that if he wanted to open a new Doggie Diner, he would need an original dog head. When the restaurants closed in the 1980s, most of the heads went to collectors or the dump. Atchley heard a rumor that one still existed in a collector’s warehouse in Vacaville and spent several years tracking it down. He finally found the dachshund, with its white chef’s hat and bow tie, sitting in a corner surrounded by antiques.
“The gentleman loved it so much and didn’t want to sell it,” Atchley said. “It took me 10 months of begging him that I was going to bring this back and open a restaurant and make people happy again.”
It also required a cool $10,000 in cash, plus one of Atchley’s prized possessions, a fully restored antique pinball machine.
Now, the dog head sits in the planned site for the diner, a vacant lot at Silverado Trail and Sousa Lane in Napa. Atchley said he sees people regularly jumping out of their cars to take pictures with the dachshund.
“If it was Mickey Mouse, it wouldn’t have a reaction, but the dog head? People just light up,” he said.
Atchley has become a little obsessed with the chain’s history, developing a relationship with Bruce Feldman, a Berkeley resident and former general manager of Doggie Diner. Feldman has served as an informal consultant on the project, sending recipes and relaying stories from his 18 years with the company. There were hot dog eating contests, with celebrity judges like former Giants player Willie McCovey and Jim Otto of Raiders fame. One time, a Doggie Diner hosted an elegant gala for opening night of the San Francisco Opera.
“We brought in a red carpet, valet parking,” Feldman recalled. “People pulled up in a limo, and they’d get a hot dog or hamburger under a silver dome.”
Feldman ultimately left in the early ’80s, when Ogden Corp. bought Doggie Diner and slowly started selling off properties. He thinks the key to Doggie Diner’s success preOgden was its commitment to using quality meat, its limited menu and how many locations were open 24 hours — there was always a big rush for chili dogs after bars closed, he said.
Those stories fuel Atchley, who is determined to create a realistic reproduction of the original diners. He wants everything — the design, the music, the service — to transport people to the 1940s. Foodwise, though, he plans to be more ambitious. He brought on chef Kelly Macdonald, formerly of the Napa Valley Wine Train, as a consultant to develop a menu that hits all the Doggie Diner classics but also offers breakfast and more creative, globally inspired hot dogs.
He wants to install directional speakers into the dog head, too, so diners can “carry on a conversation” with the dachshund before they enter the restaurant. He dreams of opening other locations around the Bay Area, and maybe a food truck.
Financing is proving to be a greater roadblock than he imagined, though. He attracted two major investors, but one recently died of cancer and the other, Brad Terrill, lost his winery and more than a dozen buildings to wildfires. Atchley hopes to find a new partner with restaurant experience.
Feldman agrees with Atchley’s central thesis — that people love the dog head and that the Bay Area still fondly remembers Doggie Diner. He’s worried Atchley’s plans are too elaborate, though.
“Everything he has done has been so classy that I’m afraid he’s going to overspend and make it hard to make it viable,” he said. “But he certainly has the enthusiasm.”
Somewhat surprisingly, Atchley doesn’t have any personal connection to Doggie Diner — he never ate at one of the restaurants when they were operating. He also doesn’t have any traditional restaurant experience, though he designed interiors for Chuck E. Cheese for years. These days, he works at a car dealership.
“When we’d open new (Chuck E. Cheese) restaurants, we’d see a line of people a quartermile long waiting to get in. It was very satisfying working for a company whose goal was to make people smile,” he said. “The dog head has that same potential.”