Does anybody know what the first McDonald's and Burger Kings were in the Columbus area? There is a surprising lack of information on this topic and I am very curious as to where they were.

I think the first McDonald's was on N. Hamilton just south of Broad. It got torn down in the late '80s/early '90s. It was next to Flowerama on the east side of the street.

 

Or maybe it was next to Bill Swad Chevrolet...

I bet this is it. I remember it being OLLLD like this.

 

Don't know if you've found this website (link below) but its got a database of Columbus restaurants and its own forum:

 

http://www.columbusrestauranthistory.com/

^^There's pictures of me in 1964 in front of a McDonalds that looked like this on E Broad just west of Whitehall.

^I was thinking of that one too. The one that replaced it is still there as another business with the current one being where the Playboy Club was.

Wow. McDonalds used to look like that? That's an incredibly aesthetic building, lol! I wonder who their architect was.

I seem to recall they eventually put a drive through on the Hamilton one but I don't think they added a dining room. Also it never got a playground... as a kid I was like "screw that" and made Mom keep driving to the Gahanna or South Hamilton ones.

First McDonalds was on N. High, just north of 4th Avenue

https://goo.gl/maps/3zeoMMJvkUm

Or was it at N. High & Morse, at what is now a Tee Jays?

https://goo.gl/maps/umuQqtxURnS2

^Why do you have ColDayMan's avatar?  :? And why does it say ColDayMan and JMeck are both Apollo legends?  :-o It's confusing and I have to pay too much attention to see who is posting stuff.

 

That's awesome, I didn't know that there was a remaining original McDonald's building in Columbus; Although I can tell you for a fact that Tee Jayes was never a Mickey D's.

If Marshall's Goody Boy was the first McDs in town it definitely ranks as one of the coolest bars that's located in an old McDonald's let alone any Pizza Hut bar.

Tee Jay's used to be Jerry's Drive In -- that's where the giant neon arrow originated.

^Why do you have ColDayMan's avatar?  :? And why does it say ColDayMan and JMeck are both Apollo legends?  :-o It's confusing and I have to pay too much attention to see who is posting stuff.

 

ColDay is back? I thought he left this place.

My Great uncle, Herbert Brown Huffman Purchased the first franchise in Columbus and I recall taking a tour a while after it opened. My guess is it was before 1962. I was impressed that they had a machine to bulk peel fresh potatoes for the French fries and, of course, the hamburgers were $.15 without cheese. 

Where was it, exactly? We're still not 100% sure.

i dk about those, but pretty sure i had heard the first taco bell was at hudson and high. would that be right? today the site is a ... taco bell. it also used to be zantigos -- they had these addictive skinny rollup chilito thingys. or at least after a night out they were good lol. i think there was another by campus too. zantigos went defunct in 1986.

 

btw it seems the first taco bell east of the mississippi was in springfield, ohio in 1968.

 

the early taco bells all only offered five items and everything was nineteen cents.

 

 

https://www.oldest.org/food/taco-bells/

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zantigo

 

http://www.brokenchains.blog/2019/01/zantigo-returns.html

 

In local news coverage yesterday of the Goody Boy closing down they noted that it opened in 1947 as the Goody Boy so the first McDs wasn't that one.