Closing of sole remaining A&W signals last call for a drive-in classic in SLO County

Kathe Tanner
·6 min read

The A&W restaurant in Atascadero will close on or before Feb. 28.

That nostalgia-blow news yanked me back years or even decades toward memories so vivid, I can still smell them, taste them and feel them.

It’s also the end of a local era, because this A&W unit was the last one in San Luis Obispo County. Another icon of our county’s culinary history is melting away as fast as A&W’s trademark soft-serve ice cream floating in root beer.

The business owners say they’re taking the remaining seven years of their franchise lease to Texas to be closer to family and in a business culture they believe will make it easier to thrive.

Even so, according to owner Dorothy Giessinger, this move will be an emotional wrench for her, her family, employees and customers.

She told The Tribune in early February that the restaurant property has been put up for sale. Combined with soaring ingredient prices and staffing challenges, along with the basic costs and hassles of doing business in California, she said it’s impossible for the small family-owned eatery to turn a profit.

Dorothy Giessinger’s family has flipped burgers and poured root beer floats at the A&W Restaurant in Atascadero for more than 30 years. The restaurant is closing at the end of February 2022.
Dorothy Giessinger’s family has flipped burgers and poured root beer floats at the A&W Restaurant in Atascadero for more than 30 years. The restaurant is closing at the end of February 2022.

“The way it’s been in California, it’s just too hard for the small-business owner,” Giessinger said, but the decision was far from easy. “There’s going to be a lot of tears.”

102 years of A&W history

The franchise’s parent company has been around for more than a century.

The website thrillist.com reports that A&W opened California’s first drive-in restaurant in 1923 and arguably was the first successful franchised restaurant company. Thrillist adds that most A&W outlets “use a fancy, paddle-stirred brewing kettle to whip up their own root beer in-house, every single day. The thing is so refined it only takes an hour to brew.”

The A&W restaurant in Atascadero is closing in February 2022 after 32 years. An old-fashioned replica of a root beer barrel fountain is a leftover display from the 1980s.
The A&W restaurant in Atascadero is closing in February 2022 after 32 years. An old-fashioned replica of a root beer barrel fountain is a leftover display from the 1980s.

A&W’s corporate website defines the famous, fresh-made brew as being “based on the original 1919 recipe … (including) real cane sugar, water and a proprietary blend of herbs, bark, spices and berries.”

The beverage brand made its way into cans, bottles and grocery stores in 1971.

According to Wikipedia, “in the 1970s, A&W had more stores than McDonald’s, with a peak in 1974 of 2,400 units.”

Wikipedia lists a veritable Heinz 57 of mega corporations that subsequently bought and then sold the chain. Now the company is owned by a consortium of its franchisees. (Canada’s A&W stores have been part of a separate, unaffiliated chain since 1972.)

The A&W website says that the restaurants now number more than “900 in 42 U.S. states and Asia, of which approximately 300 are cobranded with KFC or Long John Silver’s.”

For a time, one of those KFC/A&W blends was located on Riverside Drive at 24th Street in Paso Robles.

Soon, A&W locations won’t include San Luis Obispo County.

Sob. Because the chain’s fiercely loyal fans never considered “their” fave to be just another drive-up/drive-through entry in the now crowded fast-food field.

For many, A&W has always been the symbol of the classic drive-in restaurant era.

Juan Pacheco lives down the street from the A&W restaurant in Atascadero and said he was sad it was closing. “I’ve been coming here since I was a kid,” Pacheco said. He bought a jug of A&W root beer ahead of the restaurant’s closure.
Juan Pacheco lives down the street from the A&W restaurant in Atascadero and said he was sad it was closing. “I’ve been coming here since I was a kid,” Pacheco said. He bought a jug of A&W root beer ahead of the restaurant’s closure.

Sure, it’s been years since most of the casual, teen-magnet establishments operated that way, with the iconic, sassy, pony-tailed, tray-carrying carhop servers on roller skates.

Those drive-ins weren’t just purveyors of quick meals, nor were they corporately impersonal, drive-through, fast-through, fast-food places. No sir.

Stopping at A&W held the lure of a possible social adventure, a friendly face, a joke shared, maybe even a chance for a date.

At yesteryear’s drive-ins, teen boys could flirt with the carhops, families munched and sipped in their vehicles, and moms placated rowdy toddlers with promises of soft-serve ice cream, burgers, fries, and yes, malts and shakes, sundaes and floats.

I also remember other A&W locations in San Luis Obispo County.

There was a very busy one on Spring Street in Paso Robles; another one at 374 Santa Rosa St. in SLO that’s now Taco de Mexico (the awning over the car park is still there!); and a third at 1320 Main St. in Morro Bay, where Lemos Feed is now.

Store manager Troy Moss said that when Mike Lemos bought the building in the mid-1980s, it had changed from A&W to the “B.T and the Ducks” drive-in. He said Lemos operated out of that structure, overhang and all, until about eight years ago, when the building was razed and replaced.

Memories of Cambria’s A&W

I’m sure that, through the past century, there were other A&Ws in SLO County.

But the one I remember best was an unprepossessing, rectangular building at the north end of Cambria’s downtown area, across a wide driveway/street from the Shell service station, with a tire-eating pothole in between.

(Cambria didn’t have many national chains in town then, or now, and most residents like it that way. Today, gas stations are our only drive-throughs.)

This long-gone A&W stand in Cambria on Main Street used to be where the town’s much more sophisticated and modern Main Street Grill is now. This photo is part of Doug Depue’s vast historical collection.
This long-gone A&W stand in Cambria on Main Street used to be where the town’s much more sophisticated and modern Main Street Grill is now. This photo is part of Doug Depue’s vast historical collection.

My elementary-school-age sons used to hound me mercilessly to take them to A&W for a burger or a cone or a root-beer float in a mug so icy cold that the root beer closest to the glass froze into a slush.

Surprise! I learned recently that Helen May and her family — all of whom were/are friends of mine — ran Cambria’s A&W for a time in the late 1960s, long before I met them. Local historian Melody Coe worked for May then, and even costumed up like a carton of French fries for the stand’s entry in the Pinedorado parade.

Several historic pictures posted on Facebook by another friend, Doug Depue, were of Cambria’s A&W, of a subsequent iteration of the building called Calamity Jane’s, and of what followed, the fledgling start of the Main Street Grill.

The latter business is still there, but you wouldn’t recognize it from Doug’s early 1980s photo. The Grill has since morphed into a sprawling, modern, eat-in/eat-out/take-out eatery with beer taps and large indoor TVs that usually are tuned to sports channels.

I wonder when today’s teens are in their waning years if they’ll be as nostalgic about the Grill as Doug’s Facebook commenters were in their postings about Cambria’s A&W.

Or act the way the sorrowful, loyal customers of the A&W in Atascadero did when our photographer talked to them about the looming closure.

Tip ’o the root-beer mug to you, A&W. We’ll find you elsewhere, we hope. Just not in here anymore. And that’s sad.