Why Burger King Got Banned from One Small Illinois Town

On this episode of Our American, there is no Burger King in Mattoon, Illinois. There isn’t even a Burger King within 20 miles of the small town. The reason? A small burger joint known as the Burger King took the national brand to court... and won. Chris Suerdieck, a curator at the Mattoon History Center, shares the story.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is Lee Habib and this is our American Stories,
the show where America is the star and the American
people coming to you from the city where the West begins,
Fort Worth, Texas. You've probably heard a burger King. With
over seven thousand locations and one of the most recognizable
brands in America. You likely don't know about the Burger

(00:33):
King singular not plural. You're to tell the story of
a war between two hamburger joints with the same name.
Is Chris Curdek, the town historian of Mattoon, Illinois. You'll
also be hearing from our Hillsdale intern Nate Gallagher. Let's
get into the story.

Speaker 2 (00:52):
When I was a teenager. I started working at the
Burger King in nineteen sixty five and I work there
until nineteen seventy. So I always tell people here at
our history center that the Burger King put me through college.
So I have a real close personal connection with the owners.
And I was there during the time period when the

(01:14):
famous Burger King versus Burger King legal action was going on.
While this is a story about Hamburgers, it doesn't start
on the grill. Instead, it begins somewhere far cooler. It
was a soft serve ice cream stand. In nineteen fifty two,

(01:35):
Jeene Hoots bought it and continued to operate it and
the ice cream stand it was called the Frigid Queen.
Directly across the street from what became the Burger King
and the Frigid Queen stand was the local telephone company
operator station. So in the course of the day, all
the ladies primarily that worked in the operator building would

(01:57):
come across the street to get an ice cream cone,
and they started asking him, Hey, there's no place near
here for lunch. Who have you ever thought about serving lunch?
So Gene originally put just a single grill and one
deep fat friar in the back of the ice cream
stand and started serving hamburgers, and so that was basically
the birth of the Burger King. At that time, he

(02:20):
was unaware that the chain of Burger King started down
around Tampa, Floridaway.

Speaker 1 (02:29):
Jay Way at Burger King Well.

Speaker 2 (02:35):
Gene when he opened it as the Burger King, he
had the foresight to register the Burger King name in
the state of Illinois. But several years later the Burger
King chain opened a store up in Champagne, which is
where the University of Illinois is so, and that's only
forty five minutes away from matttun So at that time,
Jane decided that that was getting too close for comfort.

(02:57):
So when they opened the store in Champagne, Gene Hoots
filed suit against the Burger King Chain in state court.
The national chain had not registered their name, so they
kind of tried to pull a slide of hand. They
registered their name nationally and ensued him in federal court
saying we've registered the name nationally. And that lawsuit went

(03:19):
on for several years and was finally adjudicated, I believe
in nineteen sixty eight in the District Federal Court in Danville, Illinois.
They ruled that even though he was copyrighted in the state,
his copyright was superseded by the national copyright of the
Burger King Chain. But the settlement decreed that the Burger

(03:40):
King Chain could not locate within a twenty five mile
radius of Mattoon, and that ruling still holds today. Well,
a lot of people here knew about it, and of
course that you know, everybody in Mattoon was really pulling
for the for the Hootses to prevail, because by that
time it was really the restaurant was kind of a
local like on and of course it was the story

(04:02):
of you know, Goliath and the Giant. Well, like I said, so,
I worked there for five years and when I was
going to college. By that time, I was the night closer,
and during that time I just developed a very intimate
friendship with both of them. They were just tremendous people.
They gave a jump start to a lot of high

(04:22):
school kids, you know, a lot of us. It was
our first job to this day, and I've had a
forty seven year career in business, and I still would
look back and say several of the key moments I
learned in business I learned working with Geene and Betty Hoots.
One of the things that I always remember about working
for them, and especially when I was the night manager,

(04:43):
is they were hands on. I mean they worked in
the restaurant every day. Every day at noon, Betty came
in and worked on the dressing table, and at any
given time in the evening, Jean might walk in the
back door to see how things were going. And one
of the things I learned from him and remembered for
my whole business career is one of his sayings was

(05:03):
the shadow of the boss is worth three employees. Putting
in that context, you never knew who an he was
going to walk in the back door, and so you
conducted yourself accordingly. And in our high school years, when
it came time for you know, the junior senior prom
or something, they would come in and work in the

(05:23):
evening so that they're what they called their kids, you know,
could could go to the high school functions. I never
missed a function because I had to go to work
as long as I you know, cleared it with them first,
and they always called us their kids. It'd be interested
to know how many kids actually got their working start
working for the Mattoon Burger team to this day. The

(05:43):
thing that you hear, and of course I'm here at
our history center at the library and we get a
lot of it as visitors here that are returning to
Mattoon and come back to kind of see some of
the old day stuff, and it is just again, it's
kind of one of those standing legacies in Mattoon that
the people that have moved away when they come back
to Mattoon, the first thing they want to do is
go to the Burger King because it is really it

(06:05):
is a touchstone to all of our teenage years, going
all the way back, you know, to the nineteen fifties
and the nineteen sixties, through the seventies and through today.
There is still that cchet of going back to the
burger King and reliving those days.

Speaker 1 (06:23):
And a terrific job on the production, editing and storytelling
by our own Nate Gallagher, who is a college student
at Hillsdale where you can go to learn all the
things that are good and beautiful in life and important
in life. But also, let's face it, this is an
important aspect of a town in this country, Mattoon in Illinois,
that takes their burger king, their burger king very seriously,

(06:48):
and a terrific story about a national brand coming up
against a local brand. And by the way, this has
happened time again in this great country. Luckily for the
burger King, the court sided with their ability to have
a protective cone around twenty five miles, a part of
the civil law in this country and common law that

(07:09):
allows business to be equitable and fair. The story of
the burger King, the Mattoon, Illinois burger King. Here on
our American stories, Lee h Habib here and I'm inviting

(07:32):
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(07:55):
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