jamesdeluxe
Well-known member
- Joined
- Jul 17, 2020
From "things I hadn't thought about in 40+ years" --
While on my daily visit to the Nostalgic Syracuse Facebook page a few months ago, someone posted a photo of Carrols, a Syracuse-based fast food franchise that launched in the early 1960s and grew to 150 restaurants at its peak up and down the East Coast. As a kid, it was always a treat to play hockey at the State Fair Coliseum and then stop at Carrols for a cheeseburger, fries, and a "triple thick" shake on the way home. No McDonald's, Burger King, Hardee's, or Red Barn for us -- we always wanted to go to Carrols.
I liked the sleek, hard-edged aerodynamic exterior with extra points for the Carrols name glowing in neon at night:
Their advertising in the early years was 50s-ish, apple-pie imagery with wholesome Beaver Cleaver-eque kids looking forward to eating at a fast-food restaurant, which we oldsters will recall was a big event back then, not something you did every day. You can see that they were trying to change that reflex by inviting audiences to "come over any time, after the show, after school."
I'm not sure what they meant by "coast to coast" as its footprint was along the East Coast:
Soft-drink cups from their early days with the stylized outline of the Empire State in blue.
Here's the drive-in menu from the early 60s. 47 cents for a meal sounds preposterous today but even back then it was apparently considered to be a deal (and no tipping!). They also underscored that the meat was always fresh -- implying that frozen meat was what competitors offered.
This looks like an abandoned Carrols but it's actually under construction: 1959 in Stoneham, MA.
In 1962, Carrols introduced its true contribution to fast-food cuisine, the Club Burger. Sadly, the King of Clubs character seen in this ad didn't reappear in the future. Still, Carrols continued to refer to the all-important "royal sauce" (recipe at the bottom of this post) right through the end of the chain's existence. Back then, I always wondered what was royal about it and now the mystery is solved!
Carrols loyalists maintain that a McDonald's franchise owner near Pittsburgh basically took the concept of the Club Burger, made a few minor alterations (shredded lettuce and "secret sauce") and repackaged it five years later as the Big Mac without any attribution to Carrols. Who knows what the truth is but it's a nice conspiracy theory.
They even targeted CNY skiers who were looking for eats after making turns. I love how the company logo was inserted into this ad three times.
An Easter promotion:
A cardboard lunchbox: was this the precursor to the Happy Meal?
This eye-catching 1968 ad claims a Carrols location as far west as Racine, Wisconsin:
Marshall Street on the Syracuse University hill with a vintage early 60s logo and an updated early-70s interior (orb lighting):
Toward the end of the decade, they replaced the teal/red colors with a more 70s-appropriate orange/red palette and made their restaurants eat-in-only:
Here's a nicely dated commercial from 1970 with the Carrols theme song that was used on both radio and TV adverts. The two actors look like they came from central casting on a French new-wave film. The lyrics are "where the service is the bestest and the price is right" Who knew that "bestest" was an actual word (spoiler: it isn't).
In 1973, Carrols was giving out Looney Tunes drinking glasses whenever you bought a soft drink. We thought it was the coolest thing ever; however, while visiting my parents' friends in Atlanta, Hardee's was giving out the same glasses. We learned that it was a nationwide Pepsi promotion and not specific to Carrols, which was deflating.
By the early 70s, a hamburger had increased to 25 cents:
A promotion in Rochester to encourage the recycling of old telephone books:
Around 1974, they updated Carrols' logo (almost 50 years later, Carrols Corporation still uses it as a brand mark). BTW, this is the same Stoneham, MA restaurant as the 1959 pic above!
Reverse shot:
The new colors remind me of the mid-70s Philadelphia Flyers jerseys. I remember my chain-smoking father putting out his Marlboros in these bright orange ashtrays.
Unfortunately, by the mid-70s Carrols was outgunned by its much bigger and well-financed competitors, McDonald's and Burger King, at which point the company eventually figured "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em," and either closed their restaurants or converted them into Burger Kings. Today, the Carrols corporation, still headquartered on James Street in Syracuse, is the largest BK franchisee in the world with more than 1,000 locations.
By 1976, most Carrols locations had been wiped off the map and the last Carrols (Batavia, NY) closed in 1981. Amazingly, the brand carried on for decades in, of all places, Sweden, Estonia, Latvia, Russia, and particularly Finland. Here's a time-capsule TV commercial from 1984 underscoring Carrols' American (NYC hiphop) bonafides:
Here's another one that aired in Finnland, starring the British team of Hugh Laurie and Stephen Fry. Luckily for everyone, Laurie's American accent improved significantly by the time he hit it big with the mid-00s TV series "House."
This is pretty much what Carrols branding would have looked like in the 80s and 90s if it had survived in the U.S.
Carrols in Helsinki around 2000:
The Finnish chain Hesburger took over many of the Carrols locations but kept serving the Club Burger through the late 2000s. Hesburger reportedly closed the final one in 2012.
So the Carrols story seems to end there -- rest in peace -- however, gripped by childhood nostalgia a few weeks ago I decided to make an approximation of a Club Burger at home and did a search for how Carrols put them together:
All that ^^ is fine and good; still, the key to Club Burger nirvana is the Crisbo Royal Sauce, basically a simplified 1000 Island dressing. The way how the sweet relish in the sauce offsets the dill pickles is brilliant and teleported me back to 1970.
Ten years ago, a veteran Post Standard columnist came up with an interesting proposition:
A great idea, but no one ran with it.
Was anyone else here a Carrols fan?
While on my daily visit to the Nostalgic Syracuse Facebook page a few months ago, someone posted a photo of Carrols, a Syracuse-based fast food franchise that launched in the early 1960s and grew to 150 restaurants at its peak up and down the East Coast. As a kid, it was always a treat to play hockey at the State Fair Coliseum and then stop at Carrols for a cheeseburger, fries, and a "triple thick" shake on the way home. No McDonald's, Burger King, Hardee's, or Red Barn for us -- we always wanted to go to Carrols.
I liked the sleek, hard-edged aerodynamic exterior with extra points for the Carrols name glowing in neon at night:
Their advertising in the early years was 50s-ish, apple-pie imagery with wholesome Beaver Cleaver-eque kids looking forward to eating at a fast-food restaurant, which we oldsters will recall was a big event back then, not something you did every day. You can see that they were trying to change that reflex by inviting audiences to "come over any time, after the show, after school."
I'm not sure what they meant by "coast to coast" as its footprint was along the East Coast:
Soft-drink cups from their early days with the stylized outline of the Empire State in blue.
Here's the drive-in menu from the early 60s. 47 cents for a meal sounds preposterous today but even back then it was apparently considered to be a deal (and no tipping!). They also underscored that the meat was always fresh -- implying that frozen meat was what competitors offered.
This looks like an abandoned Carrols but it's actually under construction: 1959 in Stoneham, MA.
In 1962, Carrols introduced its true contribution to fast-food cuisine, the Club Burger. Sadly, the King of Clubs character seen in this ad didn't reappear in the future. Still, Carrols continued to refer to the all-important "royal sauce" (recipe at the bottom of this post) right through the end of the chain's existence. Back then, I always wondered what was royal about it and now the mystery is solved!
Carrols loyalists maintain that a McDonald's franchise owner near Pittsburgh basically took the concept of the Club Burger, made a few minor alterations (shredded lettuce and "secret sauce") and repackaged it five years later as the Big Mac without any attribution to Carrols. Who knows what the truth is but it's a nice conspiracy theory.
They even targeted CNY skiers who were looking for eats after making turns. I love how the company logo was inserted into this ad three times.
An Easter promotion:
A cardboard lunchbox: was this the precursor to the Happy Meal?
This eye-catching 1968 ad claims a Carrols location as far west as Racine, Wisconsin:
Marshall Street on the Syracuse University hill with a vintage early 60s logo and an updated early-70s interior (orb lighting):
Toward the end of the decade, they replaced the teal/red colors with a more 70s-appropriate orange/red palette and made their restaurants eat-in-only:
Here's a nicely dated commercial from 1970 with the Carrols theme song that was used on both radio and TV adverts. The two actors look like they came from central casting on a French new-wave film. The lyrics are "where the service is the bestest and the price is right" Who knew that "bestest" was an actual word (spoiler: it isn't).
In 1973, Carrols was giving out Looney Tunes drinking glasses whenever you bought a soft drink. We thought it was the coolest thing ever; however, while visiting my parents' friends in Atlanta, Hardee's was giving out the same glasses. We learned that it was a nationwide Pepsi promotion and not specific to Carrols, which was deflating.
By the early 70s, a hamburger had increased to 25 cents:
A promotion in Rochester to encourage the recycling of old telephone books:
Around 1974, they updated Carrols' logo (almost 50 years later, Carrols Corporation still uses it as a brand mark). BTW, this is the same Stoneham, MA restaurant as the 1959 pic above!
Reverse shot:
The new colors remind me of the mid-70s Philadelphia Flyers jerseys. I remember my chain-smoking father putting out his Marlboros in these bright orange ashtrays.
Unfortunately, by the mid-70s Carrols was outgunned by its much bigger and well-financed competitors, McDonald's and Burger King, at which point the company eventually figured "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em," and either closed their restaurants or converted them into Burger Kings. Today, the Carrols corporation, still headquartered on James Street in Syracuse, is the largest BK franchisee in the world with more than 1,000 locations.
By 1976, most Carrols locations had been wiped off the map and the last Carrols (Batavia, NY) closed in 1981. Amazingly, the brand carried on for decades in, of all places, Sweden, Estonia, Latvia, Russia, and particularly Finland. Here's a time-capsule TV commercial from 1984 underscoring Carrols' American (NYC hiphop) bonafides:
Here's another one that aired in Finnland, starring the British team of Hugh Laurie and Stephen Fry. Luckily for everyone, Laurie's American accent improved significantly by the time he hit it big with the mid-00s TV series "House."
This is pretty much what Carrols branding would have looked like in the 80s and 90s if it had survived in the U.S.
Carrols in Helsinki around 2000:
The Finnish chain Hesburger took over many of the Carrols locations but kept serving the Club Burger through the late 2000s. Hesburger reportedly closed the final one in 2012.
So the Carrols story seems to end there -- rest in peace -- however, gripped by childhood nostalgia a few weeks ago I decided to make an approximation of a Club Burger at home and did a search for how Carrols put them together:
- bottom bun level, lightly toasted
- bottom hamburger patty
- chopped onions and thinly sliced dill pickles
- a small dob of Crisbo Royal Sauce
- central bun buffer level, lightly toasted
- a small pad of lettuce (not chopped or julienned like McDonald's!)
- a slice of American cheese
- top hamburger patty
- a slightly more generous dob of Crisbo Royal Sauce
- sesame-seeded bun top level, lightly toasted
All that ^^ is fine and good; still, the key to Club Burger nirvana is the Crisbo Royal Sauce, basically a simplified 1000 Island dressing. The way how the sweet relish in the sauce offsets the dill pickles is brilliant and teleported me back to 1970.
- 1/2 cup of mayonnaise
- 1/4 cup of ketchup
- 1/4 cup of sweet relish
- Garlic and onion powder to taste
Ten years ago, a veteran Post Standard columnist came up with an interesting proposition:
Why not develop one Carrols restaurant, the one and only in the nation, near the Inner Harbor in Syracuse? Why not build it on a scale beyond your typical fast-food restaurant, with an open grill and an expansive seating area, as a special draw in the company's hometown? Why not bring back all the original Carrols favorites, so Upstaters who happen to be driving through the region know they could pop into Syracuse, just off Interstate 81, for their first taste of a real Club Burger since they were children?
A great idea, but no one ran with it.
Was anyone else here a Carrols fan?
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