My family left Kewanee in 1960. But to this day, I still have warm memories of the famous “loose hamburger” sandwiches, the breaded pork tenderloin sandwiches (my favorite), and the overall ambience. So, I decided to learn a little more about the beginning of the iconic Kewanee restaurant.
Some say the loose meat sandwich (also called a “tavern sandwich”) was first created in 1924 in Sioux City, Iowa, while others point to four years earlier when supposedly a Montana chef concocted it. But my sources say that it was Fred Angell, of Muscatine, Iowa, who invented the sandwich in early 1926.
Angell managed a meat market, but he had greater aspirations. He had been working on an alternative to the traditional hamburger, looking for the right combination of cuts and grinds of meat to mix with a blend of spices to be served on a bun. According to legend, when a deliveryman tasted Angell’s new sandwich, he smiled and said, “[t]his sandwich is made right.” The name stuck, even if the spelling didn’t. The Maid-Rite sandwich was born.
Angell quickly opened a food stand on a rented lot – strictly a walk-up business – to sell his sandwich.
Angell soon decided to follow in the footsteps of White Castle, which a few years earlier had become the first fast-food franchisor.
Franchising is a way of selling products or services. The franchisor owns a trademark and a method of doing business, while the franchisee pays a royalty for the right to do business under the franchisor’s trademark and method.
In 1927, Angell sold the first franchise rights for Newton, Iowa, and in 1928 for Marshalltown, Iowa.
Now the story gets a little interesting.
In April 1927, a small walk-up sandwich shop opened in Kewanee. Adjacent to the kitchen on the west end of the Parkside Hotel in Kewanee and fronting on Second Street, it was named “The Made Right Sandwich Shop.”
Fred Angell in Muscatine was only 70 miles to the west. A coincidence?
Two months later, young Kewaneeans Bruce Davis and Tom Kelly purchased the fledgling sandwich shop. Within a few months, Davis and Kelly changed the name of their business to the “Maid Rite Sandwich Shop,” and advertised they were selling “the original” Maid Rite sandwiches.
There is no record of why they changed the name of the business or why they began touting the sale of the original Maid Rite sandwich. There also is no record of whether they were franchisees, infringers, or something in between. It’s possible that Fred Angell found out about the use of a confusingly similar name and contacted them. It’s also possible that they saw Angell’s operation and wanted to be a part of it. Or maybe they didn’t care. We may never know.
Regardless of the legal aspects, as Fred Angell expanded his franchise operation to nearly 200 franchisees by the early 1940s, the Davis and Kelly shop in Kewanee took off.
Operating at 321 W. Second Street, Davis and Kelly soon wanted to expand. In 1929, they razed the building just to the south to add parking space, a root beer garden, and a root beer barrel 12 feet in diameter and 16 feet high in which they made and sold the root beer.
In 1930, they put up a new brick building to handle their expected continued growth, and their expectations were met. The Maid-Rite shop became a go-to place for old and young alike.
In 1929, 14-year-old Joe Vershaw began working part-time at the shop, and continued until World War II. After the war, Vershaw returned to help Davis and Kelly manage the shop. When Davis and Kelly retired from the day-to-day operations, Vershaw became the sole manager, continuing until retiring in 1977.
Because I left Kewanee in 1960, I’ll stop the Kewanee story here – I simply can’t do justice to the stories that can, and should, be told by others still alive today. I hope someone takes up the challenge.
By the way, in 1982, the Angell family sold the Maid-Rite enterprise, followed by corporate ups and downs, including various litigations. Today, there appears to be less than 40 Maid-Rite franchises in operation. The loose meat sandwiches may have been made right, but apparently not the current iteration of the Maid-Rite business.
