In 1936, Robert Wian sold his Desoto roadster for $350 to purchase a hamburger stand he named Bob’s Pantry on Colorado Blvd. in Glendale, California. The double-decker burger Wian created for a hungry group of musicians that wandered into the restaurant late one night and asked for something different was an instant sensation.

Wian, who named his creation the Big Boy after a chubby kid in overalls who frequented Bob’s Pantry, opened a second location in Los Angeles in 1939. In 1969, one year after McDonald’s introduced its Big Mac, Wian sold his chain of 600 Big Boy restaurants to the Marriott Corporation for $7 million. The oldest standing Bob’s Big Boy is in Toluca Lake, Calif.

Their food is still good, so if we happen to be near one in California, we drop by for a “Big Boy” to temporarily relive memories of years past while we enjoy a great hamburger.

There were 81 locations left when I put this together in 2018, but now they are down to 67.

I don’t understand it because their restaurants have always been busy when we visited.

Click Here to see if there is a surviving Bob’s Big Boy near you.

When I was a kid, we used to go to this location, which is no longer there. Click Here