Wimpy

[Patrick Thistle]

Weekend in Shrewsbury for mothers day (and football the day before). Walking to the restaurant I'd booked for lunch out today, I passed a just-about-to-open Wimpy restaurant.

Nowhere really does retro the way Shrewsbury does retro, but even in such a backwater town I was really surprised. I thought the chain was long-gone.

Am going to have to give it an olde timee go if it's open next time I'm up there.

[Antepli Ejderha]

Saw one in Chatham last weekend.

The last time I went in one as in 1989 in Carmarthen when I had a Saturday job in Tesco.

[Toby Gymshorts]

Ah, the halcyon days of a Wimpy Bender.

[nmrfox]

One still surviving in Sheffield. When I lived in Sandiacre used to go to the one, now closed, in Long Eaton occasionally. It was fantastically slow for a fast food outlet but was much much tastier than a McDonalds or Burger King (admittedly a low bar).

[Lang Spoon]

There is a whiff of decay and seedy waiting to go bust in the remaining locations of UK Wimpy. Especially the 3 hanging on in Scotland. Fraserburgh, Kilmarnock, Dingwall, does nothing to stop the idea Wimpy belongs to the past.

[Various Artist]

I went to the Wimpy in Newark-on-Trent about four years ago, I think it was. Had a burger and milkshake. It was my first time eating in one in about 20 years, I should think. We used to eat in them occasionally when I was growing up because my parents wouldn't go in the evil American fast food outlets, only deigning to patronise the slow British ones where you still ate your burger and chips with a knife and fork.

I haven't been up to Newark since summer 2014, but it was certainly still there then.

[Satchmo Distel]

Tim Moore discusses them in his Do Not Pass Go book. The London ones all went to Burger King IIRC.

Lyons Corner Cafes are another one, killed off by people choosing to stay in and watch telly, as I think were the coffee bars of the type where Tommy Steele and Cliff started out.

[Cal Alamein]

Hit a couple of em whilst a youth in the late 1970s. Pretty mediocre, being generous.

We've been to the UK many times since, can't remember really seeing any around.

[ursus arctos]

They actually started in Chicago, but were at best exotica in the New York area.

[Amor de Cosmos]

I had my first Wimpy Burger in Stevenage bowling alley in 1962. I think it was supposed to feel like a really exotic experience. (The fact that my Dad designed the bowling alley kinda diluted that for me.) I was drawn to the thrill of the burger though, until this Canadian kid who'd recently arrived at my school asked "What's that?" "It's a hamburger" I replied. "No it's not!" he said laughing hysterically.

[Haddock]

I have really vivid memory of going to the one that was in Leeds near the station before setting off on a trip to York that had been organised for the group of altar boys of which I was a member. I'd have been 9 or 10. My mum and dad had about a week before said they'd buy me a new duffle bag and leather football. I think it must have turned out that they didn't have the cash they thought that would, so my dad told me to tell the man who was in charge of the altar boys to buy me the two items and that my dad would give him the money in a few days. My dad and the altar boy leader weren't friends at all but, amazingly in retrospect, the latter did buy me the two things. It must have held up our trip while we got them from Sutcliffe's or wherever. My very clear memory is of sitting in the Wimpy trying to get the football into the duffle bag, something I eventually managed.
We had an excellent day out in York and at the end of the day the altar boy leader gave me a note to give to my mum and dad. I imagine that at the very least it contained a polite request for money.

Do I sound like Abe Simpson?

[WOM]

We have a shite, third tier chain here called Wimpy's Diner. I think if you have 100k and Tim Hortons and Subway won't look at you, it's probably your last resort. They're the kind of place you go once every few years to remind yourself why you don't go there more often.

[Vicarious Thrillseeker]

A nice potted history of the UK Wimpy chain

https://www.vice.com/en_uk/article/a...next-for-wimpy

[Hot Pepsi]

They were mentioned in our junior high German textbook, Deutsch Aktuelle Eins. And we visited one in London in 1985.

[3 Colours Red]

If you used to look for Wimpy on Google Maps (I was trying to explain to a younger colleague what Wimpy actually was), it'd only show you ones in London.

It seems to have been partially fixed since: it's saying the nearest ones now are in Birkenhead and Cannock. Still no Shrewsbury though for some reason even though I'm pretty sure I saw it when I was there in October.

[JVL]

There was a Wimpy in Hayes when I was growing up - my Dad used to take us there occasionally for a 'treat'. I think he thought it was OK to eat there as the burgers were served on a plate, with cutlery.

Was talking to an aunt of mine at a funeral the other week, and also discovered that she worked in the Wimpy in Marlow about 30 years ago. She was back in the town last year and was amazed to find it still open - but that branch then closed at the end of 2017...

[HORN]

I like Haddock’s post.

There used to be one in Newport. A visit there consumed pretty much a week’s pocket money so I only think I went once.

During our meal my mate Nige said convincingly “You know these chips aren’t potato. They’re made from bread”.

[ad hoc]

The one in Cambridge city centre used to be the magnet for all the teenaged foreign students, who would congregate outside (and a few inside) pretty much every evening during foreign student season (which in those days was Easter and European summer holidays). [This also made it a magnet for local teens hoping to cop off with a foreign student]

If the place could have found a way to have got them all to go in and purchase something the Cambridge Wimpy could have led the world and rescued the brand.

[My Name Is Ian]

I was kind of dared to go to the Wimpy in Worthing (fulfilling the "drab seaside town|" remit to a tee, there) last week to get a milkshake. I was told that it would be incredible, and it was pretty good - all the more so for coming in a tall glass - but I can't imagine myself returning for anything else.

I had a quick glance through their menu while I was waiting, though, and it was bigger than I'd expected it to be, but... it felt as though the food would hit that particular sour spot of being just too expensive and just not good enough. Perhaps I'm being unfair, but I don't think I am.

That branch of Wimpy used to have a sign hanging up outside it saying "Wimpy Of The Year - 2014 & 2015." I wonder what they've been doing wrong since? Or did one of the other Wimpys suddenly up their game? Because they haven't had one up since.

[Vicarious Thrillseeker]

I get Wimpys, Happy Eaters and Little Chefs mixed up.

[NHH]

I presume that there's a factory somewhere making Wimpy's burgers, chips and other supplies, part of a dwindling supply chain that, as it shrinks, will push more outlying Wimpy's to the edge of viabiity?

[Guy Profumo]

One still surviving in Sheffield. When I lived in Sandiacre used to go to the one, now closed, in Long Eaton occasionally. It was fantastically slow for a fast food outlet but was much much tastier than a McDonalds or Burger King (admittedly a low bar).

Really?

Where abouts?

[Levin]

I pretty sure I went to one is Thurrock about 5 years ago. It was much more chain greasy spoon than the british fast food that I remembered it being/being sold as.

I think we went there growing up because the bean burger was a, tasty and b, actually vegetarian and not cooked in the same fat as meat stuff.

I noticed that the one in Barking is no more, having been replaced by something that looks like an unbranded version.

[Crusoe]

There used to be one in Farnborough. Pretty sure I went there once and they didn’t put ketchup on burgers, rather some horrible creamy orange gunk that overwhelmed everything. Never again.

[ad hoc]

Really?

Where abouts?

According to the website it's actually in Rotherham http://www.wimpy.uk.com/locator