Hook, Line, and Sinker
What Do You Think You're Looking At? #155
It’s the last week of Lent, so this one’s fitting.
You wouldn’t think this, in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, was a notable building or business, would you?
And yet:
I sit with Ben Vittoria, the owner of both restaurants, by the window near the door. Our conversation was occasionally interrupted by a customer walking up and pressing their face against the glass. “Excuse me, if you will…” Vittoria says. “I must explain to my customers what has happened…”
That’s from a photo essay detailing the last original standalone Arthur Treacher’s fish and chips restaurant in America—which this generic-looking building on a commercial strip outside Akron, Ohio is.
This is possible because Vittoria is a franchisee, not a corporate manager. Most chains would have pulled the plug long before being diminished to a single location. But as a franchisee one man can basically go it alone. It also means, at this point, that if you don’t quite keep everything just so as stipulated by the franchise agreement, nobody will be the wiser. But he does.
It might even mean—as it appears to mean here—that the business can outlive itself, with the Arthur Treacher’s company as it was known for decades effectively ceasing to exist in one sense while ongoing in another sense. It would be like the papacy going extinct, but a lone Catholic parish continuing the faith somewhere.
See this bit:
One may wonder how an entire fast food chain exists to support one restaurant, but it seems like the other way around. Vittoria insists he is self-sufficient. He enlists a local sign company to retouch his menus and says he’s been lucky enough to retain original jpegs for custom printing. He dutifully sends a royalty fee and weekly report to Arthur Treacher’s current parent company, TruFoods Systems, which holds the rights to the franchise in Ohio and Virginia. Nathan’s Famous owns the rest of what’s left of Arthur Treacher’s….“Nathan’s actually asked me to send them a picture of our menu not too long ago…I don’t think they had any left.” He [Vittoria] grins, proud.
And this:
In the easy retelling of this story, the one that lures pilgrims from across the country, “original” means the fish & chips recipe from their childhood 50 years ago. This Vittoria can personally guarantee. He’s kept the Arthur Treacher’s recipe the same as it was in 1969: same batter, same cooking procedures, same taste. The only change is that pollock has replaced cod due to the “Cod Wars” between the United Kingdom and Ireland in the 70s.
“I’m one of the few people that had enough experience in the system to [keep it going],” Vittoria says. He joined Arthur Treacher’s in 1976, and worked his way up from assistant manager, to Director of Operations at the corporate level, to franchise owner of 15 stores by 2003. Over the years, the brand suffered heavily from corporate mismanagement and expired leases, but Vittoria remained its faithful steward: “I realized that maintaining the system was most important.” He gestures to a steel vat in the kitchen. “That vat is unique to Arthur Treacher’s,” he explains. “It has a unique fish grate which imparts the ridges to the fish. It’s over 30 years old.” He’s keeping it for parts.
That special fish grate in the fryer. That’s so cool to me. This is the kind of thing that makes me excited to write about old businesses and buildings. When you look closely, there’s so much specificity and tacit knowledge. So much that distinguishes these enterprises as having been founded by real people at certain moments in time.
And then there’s this:
Malin’s in Bow is recognized as the inventor of fish & chips, period. They opened the first fish & chips shop in London all the way back in 1865. A century later, in 1969, they sold the exclusive rights to their recipe to Arthur Treacher’s. Malin’s in Bow shuttered in the 70s and is no more than a memory now.
If you connect the stars from A to B, a fish & chips mythology begins to shimmer, a cheeky creature of Fate. Imagine this: a soot-covered Londoner in the year 1865 stumbles inadvertently into a time machine. After much swearing and banging about, he’s ejected in the year 2021. If he wants to eat the crispy fish and hot chips from ol’ Malin’s in Bow, one of the last places on Earth he could find that original taste would be the Arthur Treacher’s tucked away in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio.
When a recipe or a business enterprise goes extinct, so does a whole lineage.
The exact trajectory and fate of the company is kind of complicated. The brand, but not any of the old company itself, is owned by Nathan’s, which serves some Arthur Treacher’s menu items as a delivery-only “ghost kitchen” concept and had or maybe still has some co-branded stores. (They’re said to have been nixed, but this location, in South Bound Brook, New Jersey, claims to be one, has its own website, and misspells the name in its online delivery menu.) A photo in the Google reviews from seven months ago still shows the Arthur Treacher’s sign on the exterior.
It’s tempting to wonder if the decline of the fish-on-Friday practice for Catholics is part of why the chain floundered (heh)—indeed, that custom is considered part of why it succeeded—but Long John Silver’s, a similar fast-food restaurant, still has hundreds of locations. Who really knows. The 1970s “Cod Wars,” which spiked the price of cod and resulted in the chain switching to pollock, are seen as a turning point (down) in the chain’s fortunes.
Ben Vittoria, quoted in another article, says:
They [Arthur Treacher’s] really capitalized on the fact that in the Midwest, you have places … that have a large Catholic population that during the period of Lent Twas seeking a way to eat fish and chips for their religious needs, and [wanted to eat] something that was affordable.
In one final twist, remember the two stores Vittoria owned in Ohio? He closed one and sold it, to focus on the last remaining freestanding legacy location. And that’s what prompted a raft of “Last Arthur Treacher’s in America” articles.
But the buyer of that shuttered location, a man named George Simon, apparently closed the real estate deal with Vittoria at his restaurant—that last Arthur Treacher’s—and was so inspired by its success and hopping atmosphere that he decided to reopen the closed location!
Vittoria says that he was confident that Simon would honor the brand.
“When I sold the real estate, I was hesitant to relinquish anything to do with Treacher’s, but the gentleman seemed to have the wherewithal to do a good job,” says Vittoria. “He convinced me that he would rehab the property – the inside and the exterior – in a way that would do justice to Arthur Treacher’s.”
Simon, with Vittoria’s blessing, opened the Garfield Heights Arthur Treacher’s (12585 Rockside Rd.) last week, bringing the total number of freestanding locations up to two.
I’m not sure we’ve any seen anything like this with a near-dead chain. As of March 2023, when the article about Simon was written, the drive-thru was going to reopen and the full menu, reduced to fish, chips, and chicken, was going to return. The article also states, “What’s more, the owner [Simon] has ambitious plans to expand the brand throughout Ohio.”
The legal ability to open a new franchise still exists, because of TruFoods Systems owning franchising rights in certain places. But that’s separate from Nathan’s, which as far as I can understand owns the idea of the brand but not whatever remains of the legacy company, which after a number of acquisitions ended up with TruFoods.
In 2002, the company holding the Arthur Treacher's trademark was acquired by PAT Franchise Systems, a wholly owned subsidiary of TruFoods Systems. In 2006, Nathan's Famous bought the exclusive rights to market the Arthur Treacher's trademark and sell their products, co-branded with Nathan's Own concepts, Kenny Rogers Roasters and Miami Subs. However, PAT Franchise Systems retained a license agreement entitling it to sell Arthur Treacher's Fish and Chips franchises in eight states.
So you basically have the remnants of the old company split off from the IP of the company, meaning Nathan’s can bring back Arthur Treacher’s restaurants, and George Simon can bring them back in the states where franchising rights remain, and these would be two totally separate branches. And with those old fish-frying grates and specially made steel vats out of production for decades, who’s to say how “truly” any of these locations, except Vittoria’s, really is an Arthur Treacher’s.
(It’s kind of like that “last Howard Johnson’s” in upstate New York, that existed only through a quirk of the law. Had the rights and brand prospects been slightly different, we might have ended up with two successor chains to the Host of the Highways.)
But then again, it’s just fried fish.
Bonus: here’s an Arthur Treacher’s in Fairfax just captured by Google Street View (2009) before the sign was taken down. But the building still stands.
And here’s one I photographed myself in suburban Alexandria, with both the sign and the shingle roof intact!
Notice the lantern sign here is kind of flat, not a full cube. It was like that when it was still an Arthur Treacher’s too. So what could explain that? A later revision of the sign? A single replacement after the old sign was no longer being mass produced? I love these kinds of questions. But that’s enough for today.
Related Reading:
The Last Buffet, Or The First New One?
The Curious Case of the Last Record Changer
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Reminds me of The Last Blockbuster in Bend, OR https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockbuster_(Bend,_Oregon)
I wonder if the loss of Arthur Treacher's is the opposite of the Catholic-lent issue. For the other 300+ days a year, fast food fish doesn't level with people. Kids especially. I think LJS is a co-branded store with A&W in most markets. McD's and the others only offer their fish sandwiches during lent. And most of your Northeastern cities and towns with heavy Catholic populations have plenty of locally-owned seafood stores and volunteer fire department fish fries during lent. It's a recipe for extinction.
Still, when in the Rehoboth Beach area in the dead of summer, I will visit Go Fish. https://gofishrehoboth.com/