Flashback Friday: This ‘Big Boy’ kept 1970s/1980s Wichita fed late into the night

Welcome to Flashback Friday, a feature that will Fridays on Kansas.com and Dining with Denise. It’s designed to take diners back in time to revisit restaurants they once loved but now live only in their memories — and in The Eagle’s archives.

This week’s featured restaurant, Kip’s Big Boy, left Wichita for good in 1991.

One of the restaurants Wichita best remembers from the 1970s and 1980s was known for the statues of a smiling boy with a pompadour hairdo who wore checkered overalls and hoisted a hamburger over his head.

Kips Big Boy at one time had two of its diners — which specialized in “Big Boy” hamburgers and late-night food — in Wichita. The first one appears to have opened as Kip’s Family Restaurant in late 1967 at 6921 E. Kellogg. At the time, the chain took out an employment ad in the newspaper seeking “clean cut, energetic young men to learn cooking and all other phases of our operation.”

Another Kip’s Big Boy opened in 1979 at 711 S. Main, on the south side of Kellogg, approximately where the Main Street Residences are now.

The restaurants were part of the Big Boy chain, which was founded by Bob Wian in Glendale, California, in 1936. The restaurant became known for its Big Boy burgers, which featured two patties, an extra bun in the middle and special sauce. When Bob’s Big Boy took off, Wian decided to issue licenses to people wanting to open their own Big Boy restaurants, but he insisted they call them something other than “Bob’s.” In Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas, the restaurants were called Kip’s Big Boy, but they had other names in other regions. Ken’s Big Boy in Washington D.C.; Azar’s Big Boy in Northern Indiana and Colorado, etc. The founder of Shoney’s also was once a Big Boy licensee.

In the 1950s, the Big Boy chain produced its own comic book series called “Adventures of Big Boy,” which continued until 1996. In 1985, the chain launched a nationwide vote asking customers whether the Big Boy mascot should stay or go. By a vote of 3,291,871 to 500,874, patrons in 35 states said he should stay — and he did.

Wichitans remember going to Kip’s Big Boy for the strawberry pie and also loved the restaurant’s onion rings, chili spaghetti, salad bar and late-night breakfast bar. Many say they had their first jobs in one of the restaurants, spent time studying there or ate there after going out on the town.

The Kip’s at 6921 E. Kellogg closed in 1982, and the following year, Antoine Toubia opened his popular Cafe Chantilly in the space. It lasted until 1993, when Toubia closed it citing impending Kellogg expansion and the termination of his lease. The restaurant on Main closed in 1991.

Though Wichita has been without its Big Boys for years, the chain still exists. The Big Boy name and trademark is now co-owned by Big Boy Restaurant Group, which has 55 restaurants — mostly in Michigan and California — and by Frisch’s Big Boy, which has about 90 locations in Indiana, Kentucky and Ohio.