When Big Boy got pulled in a test of dining habits
Was pudgy statue out of step with times?
There he was, locked up for something he didn’t do. Still smiling. Still in his work clothes. Still carrying a jumbo burger. In 1989, one of Milwaukee’s most recognizable faces — Big Boy — was definitely in trouble.
Big Boy, a pudgy boy with swept-up hair and red-and-white checkered overalls, was the symbol for the restaurant chain named after him. By the mid-1980s, there were still nearly 1,000 Big Boy Restaurants around the country, attached to regional franchisees. In Wisconsin and a chunk of the Midwest, they were owned by Milwaukee-based Marcus Corp. and operated as Marc’s. At one time, there were 64 Marc’s Big Boy Restaurants, each one with the larger-than-life statue of Big Boy out front.
The sit-down restaurant’s menu was anchored by the Big Boy hamburger: two patties, an extra slice of bun in the middle and “secret sauce” (a.k.a. Thousand Island dressing) on a sesame seed bun — which sounds a lot like a Big Mac, except it was invented by the chain’s founder in California 30 years before McDonald’s “invented” it.
But by the 1980s, with dining habits changing, Big Boy’s fare was beginning to look dated — and so, apparently, was Big Boy.
In 1985, worried that a pudgy kid toting a big burger was out of step with the times, Marriott Corp., which held the national franchising rights to Big Boy, began an advertising campaign asking whether the 49-year-old symbol should stay or go. Although patrons voted to keep him — in Wisconsin by a 111,789 to 24,210 margin, The Milwaukee Journal dutifully reported on May 1, 1985 — the campaign revealed Big Boy’s connection to the past.
“The first thing people think of when they see Big Boy is hamburgers,” Vincent Webb, director of marketing for Big Boy Restaurants nationwide, told Journal marketing reporter Tina Daniell in a May 22, 1985, column. “We do sell hamburgers, but we want the symbol to be known for a little more ...”
Was Big Boy himself part of the problem? In Milwaukee, Marc’s decided to find out. In 1989, the chain removed all traces of Big Boy — including those statues — from two restaurants, at 8020 W. Brown Deer Road and 7926 W. Capitol Drive. The two locations were rebranded as Marc’s Family Restaurants and used as test cases.
Wayne Jones, president of Marcus-owned Marc’s Big Boy Corp., told The Journal’s David I. Bednarek in a Feb. 7, 1989, story “it was a great opportunity to see what would happen if the Big Boy name was not there.” Early returns, Jones said, showed little reaction: “We anticipated none, and, in fact, got none.”
The experiment, which Jones told The Journal would last two to three months, was triggered by lagging results in Marcus’ restaurant division, which in 1989 also included Kentucky Fried Chicken franchises and Captain’s Restaurants.
The experiment ended up running for nearly two years, when Marc’s decided to bring back Big Boy at the two northwest side locations. Jones told The Journal, in a story published March 22, 1991, that the experiment showed the restaurants’ business was better with the character than without him.
“We plan to keep that sucker,” Jones said of Big Boy.
Not for long, as it turned out. In 1992, Marcus announced plans to convert many of its Big Boy restaurants to a more upscale format, first called Marc’s Big Boy Cafe and later Marc’s Cafe and Coffee Mill. Big Boy was not part of that mix.
By 1993, the company had just eight Big Boy restaurants left, and those were either ticketed to become Cafe and Coffee Mills or closed. “Given its lack of profitability, we probably stayed with Big Boy too long,” chairman and chief executive officer Stephen H. Marcus told the Milwaukee Sentinel in an April 20, 1993, story.
In February 1995, the last remaining Marc’s Big Boy — as it turned out, the restaurant at 7926 W. Capitol Drive that had taken part in the Big Boy-free experiment a decade earlier — closed its doors. The company later shed its other chain-restaurant holdings, including the Cafe and Coffee Mills, Applebee’s Neighborhood Grill & Bar locations and, in 2001, its KFC restaurants.
Big Boy lives on, though. In addition to scores of Big Boy franchises in Michigan, Ohio, California and elsewhere, the Big Boy — that signature burger with two patties and Thousand Island dressing on a sesame seed bun — is still on the lunch menu at Kil@wat, the restaurant at Marcus’ InterContinental Milwaukee hotel, 139 E. Kilbourn Ave.