ANDERSON, S.C. (AP) - As they worked at the McDonald’s restaurant in the Belvedere Plaza in 1991, Latisha Johnson and Mamie Jones kept a close eye on the new construction project just a few yards away.
“I’d look at the window and see them building the new store, and I couldn’t wait until we moved into it,” Jones said Thursday. “The old building had a basement where the stock and the break room were, and I was so happy when we didn’t have to climb those steps anymore.”
Johnson, now general manager of the store, also has less-than-fond memories of those basement steps.
“Carrying stock up and down those stairs was a real pain,” Johnson said.
Today, in a newer facility on the same property as that 1962 store, Johnson and Jones are leaders at the oldest McDonald’s store in South Carolina. Sitting closer to Clemson Boulevard than the original diner, the store is the state’s only one in operation that was among the first 200 sold in the early years of Ray Kroc’s franchise dynasty.
“The store is Number 260. When Ray Kroc bought the business (in 1960), he started with Number 100,” said Bud Tabor, a retired Air Force pilot who came to Anderson in 1983 to operate three franchises. “If you bought a franchise today, the store number would be in the thousands.”
The store opened a year before Ronald McDonald became the store mascot, six years before Big Macs were invented and 13 years before the list of Big Mac ingredients (two all-beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, pickles, onions on a sesame seed bun) became a household phrase.
The eatery has undergone several renovations, and two complete reconstructions, since then-franchisee Dick Frankel began construction at the Belvedere Plaza in fall 1961.
Frankel, an Asheville, North Carolina, resident and former Notre Dame football player, was only 33 years old when he purchased the local franchise, which included the rights to all stores in the television market that included Asheville, Spartanburg, Greenville and Anderson. In 1961, he built a restaurant in each of those cities.
Frankel died at age 83 in 2011, 50 years after building the four stores.
When Tabor bought the franchise from the McDonald’s corporation in 1983, the territory had been downsized to include only Anderson. He operated four stores in Anderson and one in Lavonia until he retired, when Stacey Linette became the owner/operator of the Anderson stores.
Any visit to the store can bring a dose of nostalgia to Linette, a teen when she landed her first job at a Virginia Beach, Virginia, McDonald’s in 1979. She’s been part of the company ever since.
“I was a biscuit maker, which meant I had to be there at 4 a.m.,” Linette said. “I’d watch the sun rise over the water.”
She and husband Larry came to Anderson, along with three young children, 15 years ago. All three helped in the business, and the oldest, Brandon, is a manager at one of the 28 Bypass stores.
“It’s been a family business. The kids worked for food when they were young,” she said. “I think all our kids learned a work ethic right here.”
That’s also true for Johnson and Jones, who have seen quite a few changes over the years.
“The biggest is probably the food order itself,” Johnson said. “When I started, I fixed sandwiches and put them in a bin. Now we don’t make anything until the customer orders it.”
Johnson, a student at McDuffie and Westside high schools in her early years on the job, remembers when classmates congregated in the Belvedere Plaza parking lot after sports events and on weekends.
That tradition is even longer than the drive-thru window, which was added in a 1978 renovation. Customers of the original store, like all McDonald’s restaurants at the time, walked to the window.
The restaurant was much smaller than today’s version. It had no indoor seating.
The playground area at the store was added during an expansion in 1983. During construction, Tabor found some of the classic red-and-white ceramic tile that was part of the original store.
Tabor loved the 1960s look of the McDonald’s diners, so much that in 1991 he designed the store at the intersection of I-85 and S.C. Highway 81 in a retro theme.
The Belvedere restaurant is a supersized storehouse of memories for those who were young Anderson drivers in the 1960s.
“It was the area’s first fast food, in terms of major chains,” said Tabor, who remains an Anderson resident. “The place has a warm spot in the hearts of a lot of people in Anderson.”
The teen routine, in an era when car seat dining was popular, involved trips from the Belvedere parking lot to the Pruitt Shopping Center and back.
“Those were popular hangouts,” Tabor said.
The Independent Mail’s Our Town Memories Facebook page offers proof. The photo of the original store brought more than 70 responses in less than a week.
Lynn Nichols Henderson worked at the store when the Big Mac sandwich was introduced in 1968. “We would have contests to see who could sell the most in a certain amount of time. I think the prize was $5. I won once.”
Robert Gault said he “made many a lap” around the store and the Belvedere parking lot.
Jacqueline Keller said she and friends “used to cruise around the square for hours,” on weekend nights. “I remember yelling from car to car to people we knew and sometimes we’d park and chat a bit. It seemed everybody knew everybody.”
Judy Childs Dowling said her sister Joan worked there in the 1960s, when burgers were 15 cents. “The Belvedere became our hangout. Cruising around and around McDonald’s. Parking all of our cars, turning on the music. We could just hang out and have a great time.”
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Information from: Anderson Independent-Mail, https://www.andersonsc.com
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