When Eat’n Park celebrated 50 years of business in 1999, the restaurant set up a hotline that customers could call to share their memories. While there were a fair number of recollections about the food — touching on Eat’n Park’s shakes and famous strawberry pie (which turns 70 this year), classic burgers, and of course, Smiley Cookies — the lion’s share of memories were more personal, with people marking major milestones at the Pittsburgh-founded family restaurant.
Liz, who was a server in 1998 at the St. Clairsville, Ohio Eat’n Park (still operating today), told the story of her husband, a fellow employee, proposing to her in the break room. Vince, a cook and dishwasher at the Bethel Park location, realized in 1978 that he had a crush on a waitress, his future wife Jeanette, when “the other waitresses [got] mad when I put [her] order[s] up before theirs.” One person shared that while enjoying a night out with friends at an Eat’n Park in Monongahela on Dec. 22, 1963, she went into labor and her daughter was born, forever tying her to the restaurant. “Daughter: Kathie,” someone diligently noted in pen on the hotline transcript, which you can view in the Eat’n Park Records at Heinz History Center.
A quarter century later, Eat’n Park is celebrating 75 years, marking the anniversary of its opening day on June 5. But when it comes to Pittsburghers’ affinity for the restaurant, not much has changed, says CEO of Eat'n Park Hospitality Group Jeff Broadhurst.
Just last week, he tells Pittsburgh City Paper, he attended a dinner celebrating Eat’n Park employees who’d worked at the company for 25 consecutive years, including a married couple from Indiana, Pa. Currently, Broadhurst says, Eat’n Park’s Quarter Century Club includes about 800 employees, 400 of whom are still working. He just congratulated three more team members on 50 years with the restaurant chain, taking that group’s membership into double digits.
When it comes to lasting 75 years, “the single biggest reason I believe why is it’s our people,” Broadhurst says. He believes there is a direct connection between making Eat’n Park a desirable place to work and the restaurant’s longevity.
“The [guests] come in, they look for whoever that server is that they've worked with or dined with for so many years,” he tells City Paper.
“That’s really what we talk a lot about, whether our team members belong. And we want everyone to belong, our team members first, and then our guests,” says Broadhurst. “It's a sense of normalcy, too … Come to Eat’n Park as you are. We don’t care what you look like, how you're dressed. Come and have a good time, or if you're having a tough day, we’ll pick you up and create a smile, hopefully,” a reference to the restaurant’s motto “the place for smiles.”
Eat’n Park’s come-as-you-are mentality began in 1949 with its first location on Saw Mill Run Blvd., a small yellow building with 13 seats that served double-decker burgers, fries, and shakes. As envisioned by founder Larry Hatch, an executive at Isaly’s (originator of another Pittsburgh classic, chipped chopped ham), Eat’n Park was the region’s first drive-in restaurant, offering curbside service with 10 carhops. Inspired after visiting a Bob’s Big Boy restaurant, Hatch made an agreement to franchise their burgers, advertising the new eatery as “Pittsburgh’s First Modern Eat-in-your-Car Food Service.” The name Eat’n Park was an inversion of the popular phrase “park ’n eat,” and borne of a “dream of entrepreneurship and independence, of post-war prosperity and American highways,” according to a 1989 press release.
Eat’n Park’s opening day was so crowded that it caused a traffic jam, and the restaurant became a favorite hangout for teenagers of the 1950s and ’60s.
“We are the Baby Boomer Generation and we know how to have fun!” reads another hotline memory, which also involved spotting a 1966 Oldsmobile Cutlass 442 Convertible. “Our best memories were the times we went to Eat’n Park in Natrona Heights … and the carhop came out to take your order. The Big Boys were the best ever, I can still taste them.”
As carhop service declined in the late 1960s, Eat’n Park swapped out curbside spots for booths and tables, pivoting to become the family restaurant standard it’s known as today.
But that original generation of diners, Broadhurst says, went on to make the restaurant multi-generational, growing up to bring their children and grandchildren. (“[We] still go to the same Eat’n Park, but now we generally go for breakfast,” the hotline recollection concludes.)
“So many kids have grown up [here], and their first meals out were at Eat’n Park,” Broadhurst tells CP, “whether they [got] free baby food from us [or] it’s that first pancake when they're three, four, or five.”
Broadhurst notes that it’s complex to maintain a legacy brand — where Eat’n Park’s patrons value its sense of constancy and nostalgia — while keeping up with a changing restaurant industry. In 1974, the Big Boy franchise agreement expired, producing Eat’n Park’s Superburger.
Keeping the restaurant family-owned, the Broadhursts took over in the 1980s with Jeff Broadhurst’s father, James (Jim) Broadhurst, as CEO. According to Jeff Broadhurst, his father, who still serves on the board of directors, was committed to innovating the restaurant’s concept.
James Broadhurst created the Smiley Cookie, which came from Warner’s Bakery in Titusville, Pa., where, as a child, the elder Broadhurst would stop to get a cookie every day after school. Introducing the signature cookie in 1986 and giving it to kids coincided with adding in-restaurant bakeries.
“It doesn’t sound like a big deal now, but there were no full-service bakeries in restaurants back in the ’70s and ’80s,” Jeff Broadhurst wrote in the Pittsburgh Quarterly in 2015.
Today, the Smiley Cookie comes with every takeout order — when we spoke, Jeff Broadhurst was about to eat one — and they’re still made fresh daily and iced by hand.
Creating Eat’n Park’s salad bar followed (now the most popular menu item) and its takeout window.
“Those are things that kept us alive,” Jeff Broadhurst wrote. (For items that seem more delightfully of their time, I recommend perusing the 1960s and ‘70s menus, which include a ham and cheese salad, pineapple and cottage cheese, and an option to fill whole tomatoes with tuna salad.)
Now diversified as Eat’n Park Hospitality Group, the company operates 56 Eat’n Park restaurants across Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Virginia, and has expanded to include The Porch, Hello Bistro, Parkhurst Dining Services, and SmileyCookie.com, which sells merch and ships Smiley Cookies nationwide.
Looking ahead to another 75 years, Broadhurst says the key is “keeping it fresh” while still focusing on Eat’n Park’s employees and surrounding communities.
While “each and every one” of the restaurants is “unique to that community,” large-scale renovations are underway, with plans to refresh every Eat’n Park by the end of the year.
Guests can also look forward to a revamped Superburger, which will soon return to its carhop roots when it was prepared fresh on the grill.
“What’s old is new again,” Broadhurst says.
Approaching the anniversary, he says it became more “momentous.” Recently, he asked a group, “How many of you know a restaurant company that's been around [for] 75 years?” No hands went up.
“So, it’s special,” he tells CP. “And the reason why it's special is it's thanks to the communities we’re in … that have supported us for 75 years, and that’s significant. If anything, 75 years is just a big thank you.”
