AADL Talks To: Rich Magner of Blimpy Burger

Wed, 01/15/2014 - 5:13pm

When: January 14, 2014

In 1953 an Ann Arbor institution opened, Krazy Jim’s Blimpy Burger. When Jim Shafer was ready to sell the business in 1992, a Blimpy’s grill team veteran, Rich Magner, took over the most famous burger joint in Tree Town. Rich sat down with AADL to talk about the history of Krazy Jim’s, the famous order line, what makes a great burger and the origin of the Snow Bears. Rich gave a progress report on the future of Blimpy Burgers and the crowd-funding campaign currently underway to assure it’s future.

Transcript

• [00:00:09.31] DEBBIE: Hi. This is Debbie.
• [00:00:11.24] AMY: And this is Amy. And in this episode AADL talks to Rich Magner, owner of Blimpy Burgers restaurant, where Town and Gown have been meeting in Ann Arbor for more than 60 years.
• [00:00:21.13] We talked with Rich about the history of Krazy Jim's, the famous order line, and what makes a great burger. Rich gave a progress report on the future of Blimpy Burgers and the crowdfunding campaign currently underway to assure it's future.
• [00:00:32.50] [MUSIC - MARK COOK, "DOIN' WHAT I DO BEST"]
• [00:00:41.18] DEBBIE: Wonder if you could start by giving us a brief history of Blimpy Burgers?
• [00:00:47.12] RICH MAGNER: Let's see. It was started by Jim Shafer when he was a pretty young man I think in his 20s. He's from Jackson, Michigan. He was I believe a soldier in World War II. And after the war, he was married, was living in Jackson, and his wife at the time was ill.
• [00:01:13.96] They didn't have health insurance back then. And so he was working two jobs, and he worked in a coal yard in Jackson, and he worked in a little hamburger joint as a second job. He really liked working in the hamburger joint. And was good at it, and kind of built the business up.
• [00:01:33.30] While he was operating there, he got a tap on the shoulder from a fellow in Ann Arbor here that had a hamburger joint which was also pretty close to the library here. It was up on the corner where MLive is right now. Anyway, it was across the street from the VFW. And it was called Jumbo Burger.
• [00:01:59.03] And he started working there on a percentage basis and built the business up and had quite a following. And the landlord decided, hmm, I don't need to pay this guy anymore. Jim got wind that he was going to be let loose, so he quit and decided to open his own place.
• [00:02:19.74] First place he opened was down by across the courthouse on Huron. There's a different building there now but behind were PNC is currently there was a series of storefronts along the street there. One of them was a Greek bar, restaurant or something. Anyway, he was in between.
• [00:02:41.77] His building there didn't even have heat or anything. It just had a roof and a front. It didn't have a back door. Basically, their grill is what heated the place. So when he started, he had goodwill from those purveyors and whatnot. So he had credit with him, but he didn't have any cash flow.
• [00:03:04.52] So he need to get started. What he decided to do was to offer really cheap breakfast. I think $0.59 or $0.69, something like that, for a full breakfast, egg and ham and toast and coffee, juice. So that's how he started.
• [00:03:23.74] He did that to get some cash flow. He told the idea of doing that to the bar owner next door. He was sitting with his brother, and he explained that he was going to do this cheap breakfast to get things rolling. The Greek bar owner told, you're crazy. So that's where--
• [00:03:43.25] AMY: That's where--
• [00:03:44.01] RICH MAGNER: --the Krazy Jim start. There's other reasons that I'm sure over the years that he's been crazy, but that was what I was told. Anyway, I think they got off to an OK start. And while that was operating-- actually to take your trash out, they had to go out the front door and through the bar to get to the alley.
• [00:04:05.49] So while that was operating, I think he also had a contest. I don't know if it at that location or later, but a contest to name the burger. I think a high school student came up with the winning name of Blimpy Burger.
• [00:04:22.53] Now I could be wrong on all this stuff. But these are stories that I've been told in the past. And while he was operating there, he came across the location that everybody believes is the first one at 551 South Division. That used to be a corner market like we had around town. There's Jefferson Market.
• [00:04:44.71] There's been a lot of little markets. There used to be one down on Packard, kind of dispersed in the neighborhoods. And that's why Blimpy's is in that location-- was in that location. At any rate, I don't know if it operating, but he got a lease from the woman that owned the building and owned the house next door.
• [00:05:06.64] On nights and weekends, he got the place ready to open what started as what most people think as the original Blimpy's. I think that was in 1953. As of 2013, it'd been there for 60 years. He got it opened and actually ended up eventually buying the house next door and the store from the little old lady this owned the property.
• [00:05:37.42] So he was living next door and working at Blimpy's in the early years. I can remember him saying that he didn't really have, not aptitude, but he didn't really have experience in restaurants, but it didn't seem to have hurt him. I do know that he was very good with the percentages and had kind of an innate business sense that was-- I wished I had as good a business sense as you did.
• [00:06:11.73] I can remember one of my customers who worked there. He says he worked there the first day, and Jim dropped him off in his DeSoto or something like that and open the door and let him in and just told me to have at it. He was hands-on, but he wasn't hands-on as well. He really let his employees be themselves, invest themselves in what they were doing.
• [00:06:40.27] I think they started off pretty well right off the bat. I can remember some of the old timers saying that they got there, and there was a line out the door and down the street. So they got in line just to see what it was all about. It's kind of funny that we had lines down around the corner when we were closing this past August. So it was the same kind of thing.
• [00:07:07.85] People really liked the place I think because it was unique in that you get to interact with the employees or the cook and actually have a one-on-one exchange with them. That's what I've always liked about it and I think what a lot of people have liked about it. It scared some people occasionally.
• [00:07:37.62] DEBBIE: When did you become involved with Blimpy's?
• [00:07:39.67] RICH MAGNER: Well, like I became involved twice. The last time was 20 years ago-- 21 years ago. But the first time was I came to Michigan as a freshman in 1968. And I lived in the dorm behind in West Quad on second floor, Wenley, looked out over the back of the Blimpy's property.
• [00:08:05.85] And I can remember that following spring of my freshman year Blimpy's used to be open seven days a week till midnight. And I can remember at quarter to 12:00 at night scraping together my change to come up with $0.75 so I could go get a triple cheese on an onion roll. It was just American cheese back then, but same type of onion roll actually. That was my first encounter was as a freshman.
• [00:08:37.00] Then, let's see. The next summer I came back in the fall of '69. I ended up subletting in a one-room efficiency in one of the buildings the Jim owned. I think it was Labor Day actually I went next door and got a job working at Blimpy's.
• [00:08:57.24] So I started that fall and worked through the school year. Traveled the next summer. I was gone in the summers, but I was there off and on until '74. And while I was here, Jim asks me to do a t-shirt design for him.
• [00:09:17.05] He wanted a cow on it. And I don't cows. So I did a bear. The t-shirt design that we've had since the early '70s-- I think it was probably '72 or '73 that I did that design-- has been the t-shirt logo and actually been the logo on the awning at one time and so on.
• [00:09:40.11] And I did a couple other little things I think. I also started dating a fellow employee. I think she started to '72 maybe, ended up marrying here. We met at Blimpy Burgers. My wife Christine and I are now the current owners of what was and will be again Blimpy Burgers.
• [00:10:04.48] DEBBIE: So the burgers are great. The price was good. The name is good. But it sounds like you think the experience, the actually interacting with the staff, was what really was the magic formula for the business or?
• [00:10:17.85] RICH MAGNER: The burgers are great because we grind our own beef. It's never been frozen and processed. Every time you do something like that to a burger, freeze it and thaw it or freeze it and cook it and then heat it, reheat it, any of those kinds of things, you lose something each time. But Blimpy's has always been grown fresh every day. And that's one of the key reasons they're good.
• [00:10:48.83] It's funny because there used to be, like I said, a corner grocery store. The walk-in that we ground the beef in is older than the 60 years. It was the walk-in before Blimpy's started. And that's part of why the configuration in the restaurant was as tiny as it was, was because the walk-in is kind of in the middle.
• [00:11:14.70] The buns, our onion roll, have always been great. Jim started getting the onion rolls because he got some dinner roles from the company that baked them. He liked them so much that he wanted to use them. Anyway, ended up with these really good onion rolls. So those are a couple of the reasons.
• [00:11:34.05] Everybody asks what "cheaper than food" means. I know you're going to ask that, so I'm going to interject that now. It was started in '53. Back in the early '50s, people didn't eat out very often. That was a real treat, and it was expensive to eat out. Most people cook at home, and they cooked from scratch, and that kind of thing.
• [00:11:56.34] "Cheaper than food" kind of refers to the fact that you could go out and take the whole family out and feed them for cheaper than you cook it at home. So that's why tongue in cheek it was "cheaper than food." People tried not to take themselves too seriously.
• [00:12:15.66] Like I started out by saying Jim he would give you direction, but he wouldn't be on your case to say certain things. He didn't tell you a specific approach. He wanted you to deal with the customers. Everybody gets to do that as themselves. That's really key.
• [00:12:39.77] When you're trying to wait on somebody and you have this list of questions you have to ask and, hi, I'm your server today and blah, blah, blah, and the specials are, and this and that and the other thing, it makes it tough. But if you can just be open and yourself and do what you're supposed to do, which is to sell, and doing that directly with the customer is key, and always has been key.
• [00:13:10.06] The other thing that an employee gets is they get the immediate reaction of their customers because they're right there with them. They've designed a burger with the customer, and the customer gets to eat the burger hot off the grill, not after five minutes sitting in the window or 10 minutes sitting in the window. You get it cooked fresh. You get it the way you want it. And you get to eat it immediately. So all those things are kind of key.
• [00:13:42.90] AMY: Sometimes when you get in line, you don't know what you want. You haven't prepared. You might get kind yell at. What do you--
• [00:13:49.30] RICH MAGNER: Well, the kind of yelled at thing has-- most of the employees don't do that. Some of them do. The reason there is that perception is that there are a couple people that do that, and it's kind of a mixed blessing because some customers don't appreciate it. And I certainly understand that because I don't appreciate it either.
• [00:14:16.82] The one person in particular that does it's kind of part of who she is and the way she approaches people. And she's really not doing it to be obnoxious and rude and mean. A lot of it is in play. Occasionally, if I get a complaint letter or that kind of thing, it's usually because their perception of what it should have been, what good service should be, and how they should have been treated and blah, blah, blah.
• [00:14:51.63] Sometimes I'll talk to the employees afterwards and realize, oh, this person came in with a chip on their shoulder. It's pretty obvious. But other times, they were probably right. When you're on the line and-- I've pissed customers off myself. When you're on the line and it's busy and you're trying to get through the customers as quick as you can, you have to move the line through.
• [00:15:20.19] The whole process of ordering is dependent on the customer and you having this ongoing conversation. So to get it done quickly, you've got to ask them the right questions in the right order so that you get the burger done fast. I'll ask how many patties so I can get them on and line them up, what kind of bun, and all the different questions we ask.
• [00:15:44.08] And I don't have to remember those. Some of the cooks can remember from start to finish if the customer rattles it off in whatever order the customer wants. They'll remember, but not me. I need the buns. I line them up, and patties I line them up.
• [00:16:02.28] And once I've asked them and keyed their burger to their face, all I have to do is wait until it's time to ask them for cheese and ask them for cheese. And then I'm done with it. And the next person dresses it. So it's all kind of lined up that way, and you're trying to do it as quickly as you can because it's not as fast as getting a burger out of the window that's in a box.
• [00:16:28.14] AMY: Well, I was going to say that actually I think that's might even be part of the appeal. Because I remember the first time I went, it was like a rite of passage. My brother warned me, now make sure you know what you want before you walk up in the line, and it was a big deal.
• [00:16:42.93] RICH MAGNER: Yeah. And I think that's one of the things that we're-- we've designed the new kitchen so that it's the same kind of setup where you order the same way. And I think it'll works pretty well.
• [00:16:56.80] AMY: Going back to the bears. How did you get from the bears on the t-shirts to snow sculptures?
• [00:17:03.45] RICH MAGNER: Let's see. I started it in '92. Blimpy's had been closed for several months at that point. And Jim had it on the market to sell. I needed a job at the time, and I started working. I said, you know I'll work it on a percentage basis. I was still looking for work. When I started, I can remember I had a job interview that day, and I was wearing a shirt and tie because I had been working, unfortunately, in kitchens, but I've been used to wearing shirt and tie.
• [00:17:34.72] Anyway, I showed the-- and I'll get to the bears in a second. I showed the restaurant to a couple of potential buyers and realized, ahh, I'd like to buy this. And Jim and I started talking, and we worked out a deal so that I could start buying it.
• [00:17:55.17] By the end of 1992, we've kind of reached an agreement. And January of '93, I was more or less starting in on my agreement to buy the place. January of '93, there was a huge snowstorm. Christmas of '92, my daughter gave me a salt dough Blimpy bear. So it was a little sculpture of what was on the t-shirt.
• [00:18:28.76] And I had never thought of the bear in 3D. I kind of made a connection between the present she had got me for Christmas, and we had snow. And I had always made snowman, dragons, and turtles and whatever. I'd made snowman with the kids. And I thought, oh, I'll do a Blimpy Bear in front of the store.
• [00:18:56.39] Anyway, I did my first snow bear. I can remember there was only a couple of guys working with me when I first started because it was pretty slow. I'll tell you, when I got that there are '92 I was kind of amazed. The only people coming in were guys. It was like a guy thing, no families, no-- I think in the past there had been, but it was kind of strange.
• [00:19:24.98] At any rate, we got this big snowstorm in January of '93. I decided I'll make a snow bear out front, and I try to make him look like the bear on the t-shirt just like my salt dough bear that I'd gotten for my daughter. And then I think I made another one the next snow, which was like within a day, and a hamburger. Made him a little bigger and stuff.
• [00:19:51.62] And so he's sitting in front of the store right at the intersection where people can see it. And the next thing I knew was on the front page of the Ann Arbor News. We got more snow, and I just started making more bears. And then I noticed, wow, people bring their kids and taking pictures of the bears and all that kind of stuff. And I'm going, this is good.
• [00:20:13.28] I put us a big sign in the window, kids eat free on Tuesdays, above the bear. At night, I'd put a light behind it so it would show up better for probably the next five or six years at least. The first couple of years it was quite a bit of snow. It was fun because the awning protected the snow from the rain.
• [00:20:36.24] So if I got a bear built and it got cold, the snowman or the snowbears, they don't shrink lopsided. They just shrink. They just get smaller. And if I can keep working on them a little bit, they tend to stay recognizable. And if we get more snow, I can redo them.
• [00:20:59.42] I might start out with the one bear and another bear. I've had as many as like 14 or 12 bears, something like that, out there. I've had bears all the way, almost every year until St. Paddy's Day. This last bear that I did was a year ago February. I put a heart on it. So that was the last snowbear at 551 South Division.
• [00:21:23.09] AMY: What reaction did you get from the customers when you announced that the property had been sold to U of M and Blimpy's was going to have to move on?
• [00:21:32.94] RICH MAGNER: Understandably, an outrage. There are a lot of misconceptions as to what the deal was and that kind of thing. I didn't realize that it had been kind of in the works for at least a year before I found out. The property on that block started getting bought up in 2011 sometime.
• [00:22:00.63] So this project that the university has they got the big donation for this dormitory. If you look at how fast they've done their construction, there's no way a project that size was not in the works for a while. I was just leasing the property. We didn't own it.
• [00:22:23.22] I had an option to purchase the property, and I was in the last year of my lease. What they did was they honored on my lease. They bought the property from Jim's widow and Jim's trust. They gave them an offer just after Thanksgiving in 2012.
• [00:22:43.65] So right after Thanksgiving, we got the words that the university had offered for the property that I had an option to buy. And that was the reason that I found out when I did that the university was offering them $1,075,000 for the property that Blimpy Burgers was in and the house next door. And I had 30 days to match that if I wanted to buy it.
• [00:23:14.39] My wife and I were in shock and didn't say anything to anybody for a couple weeks because we didn't want all the questions and have to be blah, blah, blah at everybody. Then the university eventually was going to announce it because the sale was contingent on the regents approving it. Their monthly meeting is an open meeting. It's on the second Thursday of the month kind of thing.
• [00:23:45.33] But the week of their meeting is always announced in the paper the Monday before because it's an open meeting. So the agenda is always posted. The week before the meeting-- I think it was actually a week and a half before the meeting-- somehow it had leaked out, the Townie Facebook page and things like that. So I started getting phone calls.
• [00:24:15.32] The first time I got a call. I said, yeah, I think that's a rumor. And then two hours later, I got another two calls. And I said, [SIGH], OK, the cat's out of the bag now. A lot of outrage from longtime customers and that kind of thing. Had one fellow start to Save Blimpy's Facebook page and this, that, and the other thing.
• [00:24:38.02] But there was really-- there's nothing you can do. There's no point in making a big stink over what's inevitable. If I had gotten the offer for that kind of money and my mom was at the age that Patricia is at-- that's Jim's widow-- I certainly would have taken it too because I want her to have a comfortable rest of her life. You certainly can't blame them for doing that.
• [00:25:08.66] So the unique location is no longer there. We've been working on getting a new location and financing and all that stuff.
• [00:25:18.12] DEBBIE: You have a new location?
• [00:25:19.19] RICH MAGNER: We do have a new location. This is the same thing. We've actually had a location since we closed. But it's all been dependent on getting the financing together and all that stuff. And that's been quite a process for us.
• [00:25:37.91] I'm used to making hamburgers and running Blimpy's, but I'm not used to securing financing and all the other stuff. We were not really in a position to just do it. My youngest of four kids is still in college. There's been a lot of things that have taken up our-- we've enjoyed a good income.
• [00:26:04.94] But unlike-- if I had know it was coming three years ago, there might been some things that I would have done for sure. We bought our house in 2005. Let me put it that way. Just those kinds of circumstances. So we weren't in a position to just do it.
• [00:26:25.16] We had a lot of interest from the community, from landlords. We had a good Realtor showing us places. There was a lot of locations available. We found one that is very close to campus, very close to here by the way, to the library, very close to-- its old location. You can still have the Town and Gown stuff.
• [00:26:55.12] And of all locations, it's the one that I can do snowbears that. The one thing that's a little funny about it is it's not going to be that much bigger. However, it will have much more outdoor seating. Also very close to closing on our financing. We're also excited about that. And we have an unnamed local bank that's helping us out.
• [00:27:18.87] Currently, we're also doing a fundraising campaign. It's like a Kickstarter. It's Indiegogo, and we're in the last 12 days I think of it. And we started off real big. We would like to be able to announce what the location is very soon because the campaign's not over yet. But since we haven't sign the lease, all the things have to come together all that once. They're interrelated.
• [00:27:48.57] AMY: But it sounds like we can be pretty confident this is going to happen?
• [00:27:50.90] RICH MAGNER: Pretty confident that things are going to happen. Probably my fault if it doesn't happen. But everything is getting very close, and now we're pretty excited about it.
• [00:28:01.49] Fundraising started off real big and has tapered off just like those kinds of things do. We're about 25% of our goal. We don't have to raise the whole thing to get the money we do have. We're still hope we can get close to or reach the goal.
• [00:28:18.25] We're going to add some new perks. A couple of them will be 50/50 donation kind of things. We're definitely going to need the money as we get into our build-out because it's going to take several months. It'll be late spring that we'll be getting open.
• [00:28:37.15] As we get down to the end, we're going to need to make sure that we have the funds for that first month. I think once we're open a couple months things will be-- I'll be breathing a lot easier. But going to it, you always end up with unknown expenses and those kinds of things.
• [00:28:58.70] About half of our perks all have presells in them. The easiest one is a $10 Blimpy's book. Basically, you're buying your Blimpy's before we open. And there's a bunch of those in our perks that you can do presell. You can do $10, and we will be open, so you'll be able to get your burger.
• [00:29:21.86] There's two ways you can-- if this gets broadcast before or Indiegogo campaign is up, you can get a link to it from our website, which is blimpyburger.com. Or you can go to the crowdfunding site itself, which is Indiegogo, spelled I-N-D-I-Egogo.com.
• [00:29:49.30] My daughter has written a really nice story as to what happened and what's been going on. The way those crowdfundings work is the more you share, the more likely it is we'll reach your goal. But whether we reach our goal or not, Blimpy's will be reopening.
• [00:30:09.56] DEBBIE: So with the new space, similar sized you said, will there be the same decor? And more importantly, will it be the same grill?
• [00:30:16.46] RICH MAGNER: Yeah. Well, it'll be the same grill because that grill is still usable. But one of the funny thing is that people think it's the grill and it's seasoned. Actually, the grill at Blimpy's is a pretty expense grill. It's a very good grill. It's got a chrome top. There isn't that seasoning that people think is there. It's a good legend.
• [00:30:45.85] The grill will be the same, but the type of grill we have is at the end of the day you just spray it with water and scrape it, and it's shiny surface. It's a chrome grill. Using the fresh meat, it does get kind of seasoned during the day. When you see it and there's been burgers cooked on it, it looks like the seasoned grill you're talk about. And it is to some extent. But the grill isn't as important as people think. I don't mind letting them think that. It's fine.
• [00:31:21.55] [MUSIC - MARK COOK, "DOIN' WHAT I DO BEST"]
• [00:31:29.41] DEBBIE: For more information on Blimpy Burger, visit www.blimpyburger.com. Music for this episode is " Doin' What I do Best" by Mark Cook off his Blue Voodoo CD, which you can find on the AADL catalog at aadl.org/magnatune.
• [00:31:50.83] AADL Talks to Rich Magner has been a production of the Ann Arbor District Library.
• [00:31:56.03] [MUSIC - MARK COOK, "DOIN' WHAT I DO BEST"]