Old-Fashioned Dining Preserved

Author: Karen Acheson

The A&W Family Restaurant on Route 7 South in Middlebury serves up more than just the best burgers and fries in town. The classic drive-up restaurant's opening also signals the arrival of spring. With the onset of warm weather, the restaurant opened April 25 to offer customers a unique, timeless dining experience. With temperatures around 70 degrees last Saturday, I decided to make my way down to A&W with a few friends to try the food and atmosphere that everyone has been raving about.

Established in the 1950s by the Booskas family, A&W changed hands to the Hanson family years later. Staying within the Hanson family, three young entrepreneurs, Sara Cassidy, Kim Smith and Solon Coburn, decided to purchase the restaurant early this year. Cassidy's mother is a Hanson, and according to Coburn, "her family has worked here all along." The restaurant continues to employ a large number of family members as well as local residents. Some have devoted nearly 30 years of service to the restaurant.

When asked why the three of them took it upon themselves to buy the place, Coburn replied, "It's A&W, why not?"

Since the 1950s, the restaurant has made a few changes. It originally opened in the basement of its current building when Route 7 was lowered, and it moved to the upper level when the highway was raised because of flooding.

Many of the old traditions and customs, however, have remained untouched. The infamous A&W root beer is still mixed on site. "It's chilled and dispersed in a vintage 1960s pump machine. We don't get it in bags," said Coburn.

The food still has the same high quality and exceptional taste that put it well above the ordinary fast food chain. "Everything is cooked to order. We don't have any warming ovens or anything," said Coburn.

Despite the old machinery, the restaurant has modified itself slightly over the last 50 years to accommodate more than the likes of simple hamburgers and hot dogs. While eating lunch there, I noticed to my delight that the menu offers three vegetarian options: falafel, black bean burgers and gardenburgers.

The waitresses' mode of transportation may have been updated from roller skates to Rollerblades, but aside from this, the restaurant still makes everything the way they used to — just how the customer likes it. Once we had given our name to our server, she arrived with my burger just as I had ordered it, with ketchup, lettuce and tomato. Nothing else.

However, the real treat at A&W lies not in the grill fare, but in what comes out of the fountain. I ordered the coffee milkshake and finished it so quickly that I got an ice cream headache.

The one drawback to this historic diner is that A&W is notorious for taking a considerable amount of time for customers to receive their food after ordering. "We are busy all the time," Coburn explained. "We get a downtime between 4 and 5 p.m. and then it picks up again."

One of the hidden causes for long waits is the call-in orders. Customers can call ahead to place an order to avoid waiting long for their food. "People drive in and see the lot is half empty and wonder why it is still taking so long. But they don't realize that there were 20 call-in orders waiting ahead of them," Coburn explained.

Another reason for the delay is what he described as the "SUV craze." He explained that the restaurant serves about 300 cars a day, but with the advent of sport utility vehicles, six or seven people can fit in one car. Therefore 300 tickets imply a drastically increased amount of food than in years past.

The final reason for the waiting period is sheer space. The kitchen is equipped with one small grill in an area Coburn called "as small if not smaller than a dorm room." The restaurant can only physically cook a certain number of burgers or hot dogs at one time. The rewards of waiting, however, are certainly worthwhile, with mouthwatering grill items and thick, creamy milkshakes, all for a reasonable price.

When asked if there would be any changes following the new ownership, Coburn replied, "We're trying to resist change. We're franchised and we're getting corporate pressure to change." However, expressing sentiments held by most Middlebury residents, he added, "We think it's pretty good the way it is."