There used to be one in Workington, bang in the middle of the high street. My overriding memory is of being taken there by a friend's mum for lunch and her eating her Wimpy burger with a knife and fork. Whereas me and my mate went the more usual method and had finished in seconds.
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I've occasionally seen them about but I don't think I've been into a Wimpy's since around 1977. In the Canterbury branch, they set out the menu like wot a proper bleedin' restaurant might do, with starters, entrées and desserts (and 'beverages') - but with pictures. I recall having a chicken soup 'starter', which was clearly Campbell's finest, but carefully thinned with a generous helping of H20. (Nice of them to think of not spoiling our wee appetites.) The burger itself was only superior to McDonald's - at that point available only in London - in that the bread was slightly nicer. As for being 'tastier', well, I'd struggle with that - Wimpy were blown out of the water once the US chains hit the provinces with their fancy pickles and what-have-you. (I must admit, I'd at one stage thought that Burger King had bought out all the Wimpys, but not so, I guess...)
In terms of now, well I've not eaten meat since 1995, so I probably wouldn't know, but the Big Macs I see folk consuming look a pale shadow of what we had back in the day, with the packaging seemingly the greater bulk - and probably the more appetising, at that. If a current Wimpy, wherever it might exist, is now 'tastier' than that, well, I doubt it'd be that hard.
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It's alway just a little bit depressing when you realize that operations like these have an entire head office, management structure and supply chain cluelessly humming along at their wildly-substandard best. In Canada, the Coffee Time chain fits that bill. Just disappointing on every level, and no apparent desire to change.
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Originally posted by Lang Spoon View PostThere 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.
I'm surprised there are still as many around, and the last time I ate in one was probably ten years ago, when there was one in a services on the M5 that I very occasionally stopped at.
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Originally posted by Lang Spoon View PostThere 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.
Reading this has strengthened my resolve.
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Originally posted by ad hoc View PostAccording to the website it's actually in Rotherham http://www.wimpy.uk.com/locator
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As a naïve young petal from the provinces I went into the Manchester branch in the early 70s expecting it to be a throbbing centre of Alternative Culture. Disappointingly there were no tame revolutionaries in open neck shirts being ogled by the likes of Una Stubbs. I was alone. Not even an acoustic guitar for accompaniment. The waitress smiled her way understandingly through my tongue-tied order and I drank my insipid tea quietly in a tetrisscape of formica topped counters and surfaces. I wrote some embarrassed profanity or other in the tomato sauce and coffee smeared across the table top, mumbled my thanks, blushed gracelessly at her smile and made my way back out into the rain. Not the Alternative Culture I had been expecting. But I’m still hoping.
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Using that restaurant locator, I'm amazed that Huddersfield's Wimpy is one of only 3 in the north of England. I'd assumed that most northern towns still had one tucked away in the backstreets near the market.
We've been once, the food was decent, but expensive. And when I say decent, it was the same as any burger you'd get at a pub/restaurant chain, but with confusing table service and the disconcerting sight of seeing your meal being prepared behind the counter.
Other clientele seemed to be pensioners and people who were being looked after, subsets which are already catered for by many other cafe restaurant type places you can sit in all day, including Huddersfield's own chain, Merrie England. Six locations around the town, and two further afield, relatively, in Brighouse and Halifax.
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I'm surprised to hear of a new one opening. There used to be a few in the less fashionable parts of south London - Norbury, Sydenham - when I worked there a few years back but they definitely felt like hold outs from a previous age. The plates and cutlery added to the olde worlde feel (this was before the 'gourmet' burger nonsense got going). In the 1980s Wimpy had tried to go head to head with McDonalds as a full on fast food place and came off worse, which was when a lot of their estate was transferred to Burger King.
A man in a Mr Wimpy beefeater costume came to the fete at my primary school a couple of times and gave out loads of free cheeseburger vouchers. At the time that and their quarter pounder with cheese were nicer than McDonalds'.
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Originally posted by HORN View PostDuring our meal my mate Nige said convincingly “You know these chips aren’t potato. They’re made from bread”.
I was going to the Wimpy in Aylesbury Friars Square 30 years ago and it seemed like a relic then. That brutal concrete monstrosity of a development (the whole square, not just Wimpy) is all gone now, replaced by a wind-tunnel plastic-and-metal shopping centre that may be a less face-slappingly turgid colour but is actually more bleak, or was ten years or so ago which is the last time I was there. The giant concrete duck that had been outside Woolworths was transplanted to outside Aylesbury United's Buckingham Road ground, which is now also long gone. Maybe the duck adorns an ex-Ducks fan or employee's garden, or maybe it ended up in a skip of waste.
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I very rarely used to eat out with my family, because we didn't have a car, and because I was a fussy little shite - but I used to go the one in Whitehaven with my Dad, because they would do me the burger with no sauce or salad. I remember lifting the bun lid off to salt the burger, another of those childhood memories that makes me ponder how I am still alive, 40 years later.
Honestly can't remember the last time I went in one - possibly Cardiff when I was at college in the late 1980s?
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Kirkcaldy Wimpy became BK around the early 90s. And all the better for it. Bacon double cheeseburger better. Now it’s a Halifax. Upstairs closed to public. Bah. Even the McDonalds has gone from the High St, but at least survives in the retail park outskirts. But there’s seemingly fuck all Burger King left in central belt Scotland compared to Dublin anyways. I’m not big on the current BK scene in England and Wales. But in Embra, my sister only knows of Waverley station and the soon obsolete outfit by the Tesco/Black Cube hotel on the old Forth Bridge approach road at South Queensferry. Can only think of the Central station stand lasting in the Glasgow grid either. More understandable in Glasgow with the almost complete takeover of old banking floors in the grid by Five Guys or similar.Last edited by Lang Spoon; 12-03-2018, 23:37.
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Originally posted by ad hoc View PostAccording to the website it's actually in Rotherham http://www.wimpy.uk.com/locator
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Originally posted by Lang Spoon View PostKirkcaldy Wimpy became BK around the early 90s. And all the better for it. Bacon double cheeseburger better. Now it’s a Halifax. Upstairs closed to public. Bah. Even the McDonalds has gone from the High St, but at least survives in the retail park outskirts. But there’s seemingly fuck all Burger King left in central belt Scotland compared to Dublin anyways. I’m not big on the current BK scene in England and Wales. But in Embra, my sister only knows of Waverley station and the soon obsolete outfit by the Tesco/Black Cube hotel on the old Forth Bridge approach road at South Queensferry. Can only think of the Central station stand lasting in the Glasgow grid either. More understandable in Glasgow with the almost complete takeover of old banking floors in the grid by Five Guys or similar.
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My father used to do his pieces whenever the heard the 1980s Wimpy jingle claiming that the company produced "the greatest bugers under the bun". "They're not under the bun, they're between two halves of the bloody bun."
I might phone him up right now and sing the jingle, just to piss him off.
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Well different franchisees have different levels of control of franchises. I remember that some make sure that there isn't any inter franchise competition while others (I think including Subway) don't care so long as they're getting their fees. There is a difference between an expansion strategy and the parable of the sower.
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Originally posted by treibeis View PostMy father used to do his pieces whenever the heard the 1980s Wimpy jingle claiming that the company produced "the greatest bugers under the bun". "They're not under the bun, they're between two halves of the bloody bun."
I might phone him up right now and sing the jingle, just to piss him off.
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