The Old-School Burger Chain That Couldn't Survive The '80s

For every McDonald's that grows from a California hamburger stand into a multibillion-dollar corporate behemoth, there are hundreds of fast food franchises that didn't make it. There are the instant non-starters, of course, like legendary actor Mickey Rooney's failed Weenie Whirl chain that started in the 1980s and folded quickly. But then there are the more tragic cases: Chains that sprouted up in the middle of the 20th century, enjoyed success for a time, and then collapsed for reasons that may or may not have been within their control. Such a fate befell Winky's, a hamburger chain founded near Pittsburgh in 1962 before going bankrupt 20 years later.

Winky's is not to be confused with Winkie's, the monster-housing diner from David Lynch's surrealist masterpiece "Mulholland Drive." (The late David Lynch loved the fast food franchise Bob's Big Boy, anyway.) Winky's was founded by the Erenstein family, who also operated the Jiffy Steak Company, after sending a nephew over to work at a McDonald's and take careful notes on its operations. About 15 years later, the chain became a success in the Pittsburgh Tri-State Area (referring in this case to parts of Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Virginia), with 42 locations. It turns out it's pretty helpful to own a meat company if you're running a fast food restaurant — but unfortunately, it wasn't enough to save Winky's.

So what exactly happened to Winky's? Why don't we see those delightful A-frame restaurants all over Pennsylvania, hawking the Big Wink and other hamburgers to hungry customers? Well, in the 1970s and 1980s, Winky's faced a problem many smaller fast food chains, such as old-school seafood chain Arthur Treacher's, faced around that time: It was simply too hard to compete with the biggest chains. Despite Winky's president Bernard Erenstein's optimistic 1967 prediction that his chain would operate coast to coast, it was not to be: The trio of McDonald's, Burger King, and Wendy's waged all-out burger warfare on each other, leaving plenty of regional chains like Winky's in the dust.

It also turns out that the late 1970s and early 1980s were not a good time to operate a business in the Pittsburgh area. Deindustrialization was in full swing, which was terrible news for a city synonymous with the steel industry. More than 150,000 jobs were lost, and without a reliable source of income, it becomes harder to justify treating yourself to a tasty hamburger. Winky's filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 1982, and although it took out a newspaper ad claiming that it would keep going ... well, it didn't.