The Retro Kmart Restaurant Chain Almost Nobody Remembers

The last time I was in a Kmart, I remember the location having a Nathan's Famous restaurant inside. Prior to that, my childhood memories of shopping at the once-giant retail corporation include being able to get ICEE's inside the stores. Apparently, before the famous premium hot dogs and the cherry-flavored frozen treats, several Kmarts were home to Kmart Chef Restaurants. From 1967 to 1974, the company opened 11 of these eateries across the country, from New Mexico to Pennsylvania.

The first Kmart Chef opened at a store in Pontiac, Michigan, and offered the kind of casual, affordable fare found at fast food joints: Hamburgers, fries, hot dogs, fried chicken, soft drinks, and desserts. Some recall that patrons would grab a tray and select their food choices from a number of cafeteria-like stations. In that respect, it resembled the casual restaurants at IKEA, which use their food to get customers to spend more. Different locations offered indoor, outdoor, and even drive-in service, with carhops sometimes delivering to parked cars.

Kmart likely had the same theory in mind: The longer a customer spends in a store (even while eating), the more they may spend. To reinforce that idea, Kmart Chef mailed weekly coupons advertising deals on different foods each day of the week.

If you wanted to experience the best of Kmart Chef restaurants, you wouldn't order a mere hamburger — you'd go for the signature Big K burger, which incidentally just sounds like a standard burger. Advertised as a "huge hamburger with tomatoes, lettuce, dressing, and onions," the company offered the sandwich for just 55 cents, and that sometimes included a free milkshake, according to the Retroist. The weekly coupons occasionally featured a buy one, get one free Big K deal. Others included a chicken dinner and drink special for 99 cents, and a burger-fry-milkshake deal for 55 cents.

It's fair to say that most American Kmart shoppers never got to experience the wonders of Kmart Chef, as the restaurants existed only a few years and in very few locations, although one advertisement seen on Facebook from the 1980s promotes a Kmart "Family Restaurant" menu with turkey clubs (a sandwich Anthony Bourdain hated), hot beef sandwiches, and fried fish dinners. Later, many Kmarts introduced Kmart Cafes where shoppers could buy sandwiches, snacks, and pizza (some stores sold Little Caesars pies and slices). You certainly can't deny that Kmart fought hard to compete in the food space for decades. In the end, the company largely collapsed: Its last full-sized "big box" U.S. store closed in October 2024.