Original 59 Diner Closed

Damn, that really sucks. Before it was the 59 Diner it was my Grandfather's restaurant.

 

Great shakes, worst restrooms I've ever seen.

 

lulz, I was just about to post this.

 

I am not surprised. I loved that place when I was a kid but I don't remember the quality of the food. I last went about 5 years ago and it was TERRIBLE. It was a long wait, despite being one of 10 people there, for crappy frozen food. I have driven past the location by Willowbrook and it is empty. I don't know that I have ever seen more than 1 or 2 cars in the parking lot during lunchtime but it may differ at night and on weekends.

Those milkshakes were always awesome though.

 

Unless you are really young, when you were a kid it was a totally different restaurant.

 

Although I haven't been there in several years, i used to love that place. All I ever got was breakfast there and it's hard to mess that up.

 

Their main problem is that they changed the model and cheapened the food to where they became a 2nd rate Denny's with a theme and then also went cheap on management. They were paying "managers" maybe a dollar above minimum wage....what quality of management do you get for that price?

Another issue is that they picked terrible locations. The Stafford location and the I-10 location were in terrible spots to generate business. Hell, most people don't even know that there was a short lived Missouri City/Sugarland location off of Highway 6 because of the awful location they picked.

 

This is a perfect example where free enterprise wins. Free to provide terrible management and terrible strategy, which impacted operations and food terribly. Accordingly, the market responded freely.

 

They opened one in The Woodlands last year and it's already closed. Heard nothing good about it.

 

I just passed the location on Willowbrook. Saw an old guy walk up to the door, read some orange sign, turn around and head back to his car. I guess they are totally done.

 

yeah they all closed

 

This sounds like a sad pantomime. 59 Diner was probably the last thing that guy had going for him. And now he's dead.

 

All locations closed. The owner is in trouble for unpaid wages. He owes more than $200k to 19 employees. Recently showed up at one of the locations to pay other unpaid employees and it got heated.

http://www.houstonpress.com/restaur...-up-to-pay-employees-and-it-got-tense-8216570

 

I was just fixing to drop that gem. The guy is a douchebag.

 

My loyalty to my employer ends the second I don't get paid. I'll never understand why people keep working at a place that can't afford to pay them.

 

I remember when they announced the death of Osama Bin Landen in 2011, they were interviewing students live at the Stafford location who where studying there, thought that was an odd location to go interview random people

I loved their chicken/dumplings, going to miss that the most

 

Is that the atm kingpin who used to post here?

 

Kids studied at 59diner???