Wednesday, April 30, 2008

Kmart...Eat Here and Get Gas!















You know, there’s really nothing like a Double K Burger when you’re craving that great Kmart taste! Mmmmmmm!

Yes, my friends, there really was such a thing as a “Kmart Chef”. After five years of outstanding growth, Kresge began to explore ways to leverage the success of Kmart. Though virtually all Kmarts had in-store snack bars and/or concession stands, Kresge figured that a free-standing fast food restaurant, complete with the Kmart brand name and located next to the main store, would be an effective way to snare those customers who managed to escape the store with their lunch or dinner dollars still in pocket. It was also assumed that the highly visible locations of the Kmarts – typically on high-traffic streets or adjacent to highways - would draw an ample number of customers as well. The first Kmart Chef, pictured above, was opened in October, 1967 next to the Pontiac, Michigan Kmart. Plans were announced for 10 more to open in 1968.

The stores were somewhat of a hybrid between a McDonald’s-type fast food restaurant and a cafeteria. Customers walked up to a counter (ala McDonald’s) but were given a tray to push along a stainless-steel cafeteria line. The Kmart Chefs did have interior seating, something that McDonald’s was in the process of a frenetic transition to as they replaced their famous red and white-striped walk-up drive-ins with sit-down restaurants. The initial “limited, high-turnover menu”, as Kresge described it, consisted of “hamburgers, cheeseburgers, frankfurters, fish sandwiches (gotta be ready for Lent), French fried potatoes, fried apple turnovers, assorted carbonated and fruit drinks, coffee, hot chocolate and milk”. As the outdoor sign said, hamburgers were initially 18 cents. That same year, in a controversial but fiscally necessary move, McDonald’s finally raised the price of their burgers from their traditional 15 cents to 18 cents as well.

As it turned out, only a small number of Kmart Chefs were ever opened, with the 10th store, an Albuquerque, New Mexico unit, not even opening until 1971. At that time, there were Kmart Chefs in Pontiac, Clemens and Warren MI, Erie PA, Moline IL, Wichita KS, Kansas City MO, Houston and Lubbock, TX. It was truly a random strategy, to put it charitably. The Kmart Chefs were closed down in 1974.

More successful in the long run were the Kmart gas stations. Many Kmarts had auto centers, generally free-standing units, and the addition of a Kmart-branded gas station was first tried in April, 1967 in the parking lot of an Atlanta Kmart. Pictured above is the original gas station (Check out the 100 octane gas - that stuff would probably be eight bucks a gallon now!). Two more Kmart gas stations were opened in the Metro Atlanta area the following January, beginning a strategy that Kmart has employed on and off ever since.

35 comments:

  1. My girlfriend and I love your blog and are constantly wondering where you get these amazing photos. Your recent Kmart essays inspired us to visit one of our local Nashville Kmart locations last weekend for fun. We managed to spend an hour in this very old store. The sad part is that we were just two of few in the store. There were only two checkout lanes open, and the place was a mess. It had been remodeled over the years and bears the 90s "Big Kmart" signage, but the old auto service store remains in front which is now a tire store, and the garden shop is almost identical to what you would have seen back in the day. We both laughed at how the carts all had different logos on them. There was a cart with the original 1962 logo on one, the 70s logo, the 90s Kmart, Big Kmart, and Super Kmart, as well as the new design from the last couple of years. The employees however seemed bored, sad, and uninterested in being there. I miss the Kmart of my youth, and I have many fond memories of back to school shopping there, going with Dad for auto parts, and other stuff. Kmart was a big part of my childhood, and in Peoria, Illinois we had one of the original stores which remained until about six years ago before it moved into a former Venture location. Your blogs about Kmart's heyday have brought back many pleasant family shopping memories from my 70s and 80s youth. Thanks.

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  2. I would also like to add that as a child, I preferred the Kmart Color Crayons to Crayola. The Kmart crayons seemed to have a vivid, brighter color than the Crayolas, were made of a softer, more pliable wax, and made my childhood drawings jump off the paper. Only the Kmart Color Crayons 64 count box contained the Prussian Blue I loved so much, the silver crayon which was as shiny as a new nickel, and their color of green was as vivid as Spring grass. I would kill for a box of Kmart Color Crayons right now, and I'm now in my thirties.

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  3. I identify with Jack's sentiments although I never got the chance to really experience the Kmart he and others on here did, I wish I had.

    18 cent burgers are a steal!

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  4. Jack - that's my experience with my local Kmart as well.

    As to the post: That's is what is really sad about the Kmart story - in so many ways they were years ahead of their times. But they never really followed up on and exploited their early opportunities.

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  5. Jack - Thanks for the kind words. Most of the photos come from old retail trade magazines or company publications, some are postcard views. Once in a while I'm able to find some great old 8 X 10's on Ebay. Just won an auction on some incredible grocery photos the other day, as a matter of fact.

    I lived in the Nashville area from 1988 to 2004 and have very fond memories of the place. My wife actually worked at the Donelson Pike Kmart one Christmas season in the late 80's before I met her. Which Kmart did you visit? The ones I remember most were the Donelson one, the one at Harding Place and Nolensville Rd. and the one on Gallatin Rd. off of Briley Parkway. Are they still there? That's funny (and sad at the same time)about the hodgepodge of shopping carts. I'd love to see the '62 one!

    My experiences in the early 70's in the suburban Chicago Kmarts sound a lot like yours, they were great times, looking back at it. The funny thing is that all the while we were shopping there, my Dad was lamenting the decline of "Sears Roebuck", as he still calls it.

    Check Ebay for the crayons - you never know!

    Didi - 1968 dollars were a whole lot bigger than 2008 ones, unfortunately.

    Derek - I couldn't agree more.

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  6. We went to the Nolensville Road store, which is actually a little more North than OHB, but Thompson Lane... directly across the street from a brand new, HUGE Wal-Mart Supercenter where Harding Mall used to stand. Nashville is a nice place, but we're looking at relocating to Florida within the year.

    I'll gaze Ebay for some crayons. LOL.

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  7. Oh, and yes... I believe ALL of those Kmart stores are still in operation at those locations. They are amazingly small, all of them, and it's a wonder they stay open and competitive with all the other shopping there is in this rapidly growing city, and with Wal-Mart's rise in the last decade here. Wal-Mart has opened and rebuilt several stores in Metro in the last five years.

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  8. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BqaE7MzEq9A

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  9. Jack - I caught my OHB mistake and changed it to Harding Place, then I saw your response. I think it was HP although Thompson Lane is close. We used to get a big kick out of how the street names change so quickly in Nashville (Granny White Pike, Battery Lane, blah, blah, blah....). You probably won't see as much of that in Florida!

    Harding Mall was a great little mall, that's really a shame it's gone.

    That Kmart commercial is a riot! That's the golden age right there, in a nutshell!

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  10. You are sooo right, that IS Harding Pike. Duh. Harding Mall was ON Harding. Not Thompson. We really know our South Nashville don't we? And I lived down there for a few years too. Ha.

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  11. Talk about innovative! I could see Kmart selling gas back in the day, because just about all the major retailers did, but the Kmart Chef fast food stores were something else!

    The store design on both concepts were really cool, and I can see why Kmart was such a big deal back in the day. They truly were on the forefront of modern suburban retailing.

    I've only seen one freestanding Kmart Auto Center. It actually remained intact for some 25 years after the Kmart store near it before it got remodeled into a Goodwill store.

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  12. Steven, you're right, Kmart was huge, particularly in the 70's, and received generally positive press as best as I can remember. It's a shame they didn't roll the "Chef's" out at more locations.

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  13. I lived in Nashville '88-'90. The Nolensville Road store was a dump with uninterested employees, and few shoppers even then. It obviously had not been touched in 15-20 years and I'm surprised that it has survived. The nearest Wal-Mart was an old Kuhn's Big K in Tusculum that was rather small, and also a dump, but very popular.

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  14. Funny this article mentions about locations with gas stations, and the only Kmart I've ever seen with a gas station is one in Richmond, IN, on the west side of town. (of course, it doesn't appear to be an old one to me, but one that was probably added sometime in the 1990s/2000s) I'm not sure how old this Richmond, IN store appears to be, but it's interesting in the sense that it doesn't have to compete with a Wal-Mart Supercenter, which is on the other side of town(east side) from it.

    The Kmart Chef restaurant counters look really interesting, it's very weird to me that they never rolled those out beyond having them in about 10 stores.

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  15. Dumpster McN-

    They really haven't done that many locations with gas stations, certainly as compared to Wal-Mart.

    I agree that the Kmart Chefs were interesting, and should have been tried on a larger scale.

    Thanks!

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  16. Our first Kmart opened in the mid-1960s in a suburb of Halifax, Nova Scotia. It did not locate in Halifax itself for several reasons, one of which was that the city had an "early closing bylaw" that prevented stores from opening after 6PM except on Thursday and Friday nights. Amazingly, the last remnants of that were not repealed until about 10 years ago. The suburban Dartmouth location was not subject to that and so it attracted much retail construction at that time.

    Ours never had the Kmart Chefs, but one of my vivid childhood memories was related to food from Kmart. They only had a few items available, but they sold "Virginia Ham" (a deli cooked ham loaf) at what I guess was a low, low price since we seemed to buy it a lot; they had a fountain machine that sold a lime drink that was very unique and always ice-cold; and most interestingly to me, they had a donut machine that made donuts on-site and which let you watch them go round in the hot oil through a window in the side. I spent lots of time watching that machine when I would visit the store with my parents, though as I recall we only bought the donuts a few times because they didn't seem all that good.

    All our Kmarts are gone now. They were pretty low-end places in their last few years.

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  17. Greg - Thanks for those great reflections on the Nova Scotia Kmarts! The local ordinances you mention are similar to many that existed on the books of various towns and cities in US until the 60's, 70's or even later.

    And I'm amazed how many Kmart comments revolve around their food!

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  18. I was also inspired by this blog to go to my local Kmart, on SR 60 and Providence Road in Brandon, FL, and have a gander. It was opened in 1972, and I moved into the area in 1989 - I was four years old, though. I hadn't been there in years and years - my parents never liked it there, since it was in shambles even back then (1991/1992).
    It's been remodeled extensively, but it's weird to go inside and see that, on the whole, nothing has changed from the typical photos on your blog - the electronics department is tiny, pharmacy operates out of an almost tortuously small glass-and-drywall cage, all of the checkout stands are situated to the left of the front door... which is such a big change from the new Walmarts and Targets, where the stands are basically right in front of the front doors. You can still see the '60s ingenuity in full effect here. There's still a cafeteria, even! - even though it's leased to Domino's Pizza and didn't look too inviting. It's odd to see a cafeteria in a place like that nowadays - even the old Walmart by my house got rid of theirs a long, long time ago.

    It was also interesting to note that the vinyl on the floor was the same - since you could see "counterscars" all over the place, where showcases, shelves and counters had sat for years, and then been shuffled around.

    There was a decent crowd there - nowhere near abandoned - and it's a shame that the store can't modernize a bit and bring in some more business. I like historical touches in a shopping environment, but not when it isn't kept up, and drives business away. (The Winn-Dixie down the street from me, on U.S. 301, was basically untouched since the late '60s, but kept clean and tidy. I loved shopping there, until they updated it, quite untastefully, a couple years ago. Boo!)

    Anyway, I love your blog, and even though I'm relatively young, I remember the tail end of the grand Sears stores, Pace (which was in Brandon for just a couple years, but we shopped there all the time), Wards and all of those genteel Southern grocery chains. Good stuff.

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  19. Shane - Thanks very much! There were some definitely some carryovers from the 60's as late as 1972. Your analysis of the space allocated for different departments in those days is right on, and I love the term "counterscar" - first I've ever heard it! Brings to mind all those great, long gone discount stores that now house flea markets. Thanks again!

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  20. love your blog! I'm going to update picks of the Nolensville Pike Big Kmart in Nashville, TN eventually on my blog www.superkmart.blogspot.com and already have pics of the Donelson Pike one on.

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  21. Kmart- Thanks! I remember the Donelson Pike store very well. My wife actually worked there briefly before we were married.

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  22. I agree with Jack's comment on the Kmart crayons. By the 1990s, they were just Sargent crayons with different labels, but I LOVED them because they had such exotic colors as crimson, chartreuse and GAMBOGE. Freakin' GAMBOGE. I still love that word. Later on, they changed the crayons repeatedly; by the end, they were these waxy things that at least still had some zing in the form of dark orange, dark YELLOW-orange, etc. And they had such a different smell than your Crayolas, Rose Arts, etc.

    I wonder which Pontiac Kmart that was? Pontiac had one at Perry and Glenwood which closed in the early 1990s, but it doesn't look to have ever had a restaurant of any kind in front. I think I was once told that there was a Kmart on Opdyke near Square Lake, which closed ages ago.

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  23. TenPoundHammer - Maybe someone can enlighten us in the Pontiac location. And I have to say "gamboge" is a new one on me. Wouldn't even want to guess what color that was like!

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  24. "Gamboge" is sort of a yellowish orange.

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  25. I REMEMBER THE K-CHEFS....I SEEM TO REMEMBER THEY HAD A REALLY BIG BURGER,,,SIMILAR TO A BURGER KING WHOPPER..USED TO LOVE THAT PLACE....

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  26. OMG I found your page by googling "KMart Crayons" because I too loved the vividness of the colors, especially the Prussian Blue as well...it was my FAVORITE color! I love your blog...definitely bookmarking it! Thanks for the memories!

    It was neat to find out there was a KMart Grill in Wichita, KS because that's where Im from :)

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  27. I grew up in Berwyn Illinois and went to the Kmart in North Riverside as a kid in the late 70s through mid 80s. I wanted to add that this Kmart had a cafeteria with a wide arrange of dinners and lunches, infact it was more of a restaurant then a cafeteria. I used to love when we would make a pitstop there and I enjoyed getting the chopped steak dinner.

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  28. I did some digging around. Judging from the picture, the original one was in front of the Kmart at 7 S. Glenwood in Pontiac. This particular Kmart seems to have closed in the early 1990s or even late 1980s.

    The other two Kmart Chef locations are amazingly still in business. Mt. Clemens is now Dee Dee's and Warren is now Ham Place Coney Island. (The Mt. Clemens Kmart itself is also a victim of the 1990s.)

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  29. 100 octane gas was measured by the old Research method, vs. the current (Research+Motor)/2 method. 93 octane today is equivalent to about 98 under the old method. The old 100 octane also had the "benefit" of LEAD.

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  30. How would you like to wear a Kmart gasoline uniform to work everyday? well it's a job. Such a cool blog and all of that food looks great but I will go for the Kmart brand fish sandwich, fries, turnover and orange crush. Love this vintage stuff! TY.

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  31. 2/10/13
    RobGems.ca wrote:
    That K-Mart Chef in Pontiac was definitely located at Glenwood Street and Perry Street. After the K-Mart Chef restaraunt closed in 1974, it briefly became an Olympia Coney Island.This lasted until 1982, when it was replaced by a Tubby's Submarine Sandwich shop. Then Tubby's moved out in 1993, and was replaced by an Asian cusine restaraunt,then finally a Mexican fast food restaraunt, before finally closing for good in 2007. Today the boarded up remains of the restaraunt and the half-empty Glenwood Plaza is a sad reminder of a bygone era in Pontiac. One thing I also remember besides the K-Marts at Glenwood Plaza was the huge Federals' Shopping Center (closed in 1973, replaced by a Farmer Jack's ,now a sad closed up building after Farmer Jack's went bankrupt in 2008, and purchased by Kroger's Markets.)

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  32. K mart did eventually re-enter the gasoline business in the 1990's, mainly via "K mart Express" convenience stores adjacent to K mart or Super K mart locations...however, these are still few in number, and a few have ended up closing as K mart shuttered stores from its 2001 bankruptcy and beyond. Two surviving K mart Express gas stations are on Brookpark Road in Brooklyn, OH (by Super K mart), and on Route 62 and Middlebranch Road in Canton, OH (by a Big K mart.)

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  33. I remember that K-Mart in Pontiac as a kid from the late 60's &very early 70's We used to drive over from Rochester occasionally but never did eat there. By a strange coincidence I also later lived near the Nolensville Rd store and even later the Donelson Pike store (both) in Nashville some of the others wrote about in this thread. The Donelson Pike store was frustrating because there were never enough cashiers open to get out of the store before you grew a beard waiting in line, something I think was a typical K mart problem.

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  34. I still miss the K-Mart ham sandwiches, which I had at various Detroit-area locations, probably most often in Hazel Park. So simple: Ham (sliced from canned, if the gelatin was any indication) and shredded lettuce on a hamburger bun. American cheese if you like. Maybe add some French's yellow mustard. Oddly memorable.

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  35. The Temple City Kmart that I used to work at in 1990 had all-you-can-eat fried chicken on the menu once in a blue moon(when they still had their in-store cafeteria)

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