Big Boy Stories: When Entrepreneurs Were Hamburger Flippers

December 2023 Newsletter

Big Boy Stories: When Entrepreneurs Were Hamburger Flippers

Every time I drive past an In-N-Out burger in Austin, I think of my grandfather. When the In-N-Out chain arrived here in 2013, Austinites were offended. Locals thought the wave of transplants from Californians had gone too far.  After all, didn’t Austin offer its own unique BBQ fare that represented Texans far better than the LA, West Coast hamburgers? Turns out that the burger chain belonged to the latest wave of entrepreneurs arriving from the West Coast. 

Burger entrepreneurs were in their sublime moment during the 1930s and 1940s in Southern California. Imagine Los Angeles as the Silicon Valley of burgers in a bun. LA was the center of hamburger innovation and creativity, the site of origin stories not only of In-N-Out burgers and MacDonald’s but of Bob’s Big Boy restaurants. 

Big Boy restaurants are part of my story, beginning with a warm glazed doughnut. 

I grew up in Los Angeles and my grandparents lived in our neighborhood, tucked up in the hills near Pasadena in La Cañada. Early one Saturday morning during the 1950s, my grandfather, a building contractor, took me along with him as he toured his new project, the first Bob’s Big Boy hamburger restaurant. It was in Burbank, California. (It’s still there, now designated as a Point of Historical Interest). Along with hamburger pioneers and entrepreneurs, Scott MacDonald, Bob Wian, and Ward Albert, my grandfather was the building contractor and a business partner, working alongside the architect Wayne McAllister. 

Take a look at the original building construction contract from 1949: