A hamburger stand with a '50s attitude: 'Freeze' marks big North Bend birthday
That shouldn't be a problem today, when King County's oldest continuously operating hamburger stand celebrates its 50th anniversary by offering burgers, fries, shakes and ice cream at 1951 prices.
Current owner Ken Hearing expects customers will begin lining up long before the 10 a.m. opening.
Hamburgers will be 25 cents, French fries 15 cents. Root-beer floats and shakes will go for 30 cents, and ice-cream cones will be 15 and 30 cents.
Hearing, who was born the year the restaurant opened, sees it as a way to thank loyal customers and possibly snare new ones.
An amused Dorothy Scott says it will be just like the old days when she put in a lot of hours and didn't make much money. "Even though soft ice cream was a big deal in 1951, the store wasn't an instant success," she said.
Scott and her husband, who died in 1996, picked the Dairy Freeze franchise over others because they wanted a broader menu. (At that time, some soft-ice-cream franchises prohibited selling sandwiches.) She said it was the addition of hamburgers and chili, particularly during snowstorms, that kept the small shop going.
Scott's Dairy Freeze predates the venerable Dick's Drive-In by three years and Burgermaster by one year. XXX Root Beer was started in the 1930s, but the only remaining stand, in Issaquah, changed locations in the 1960s.
Scott's still has the same neon ice-cream cone on the roof and the original sign in front of the building.
Never a drive-in, Scott's Dairy Freeze continues to pass hamburgers, fries and milkshakes through the same service windows that opened to walk-up customers in 1951. A small dining room was added to the west side of the building in the 1960s.
Hearing, who grew up in North Bend, has fond memories of the Adirondack chairs that still line the east wall. Now painted a bright aqua, they're filled on weekends with lounging hikers who sit and gaze at Mount Si.
Hearing tweaked the menu to meet modern tastes — adding bacon-lettuce-and-tomato sandwiches, vegetarian burgers and grilled-chicken sandwiches — but he still lathers the burger buns with the secret-recipe relish used since the stand opened.
Scott's Dairy Freeze sits on North Bend Way, which used to be Highway 10, at one time the main east-west road between Eastern Washington and Seattle. In the winter, Dorothy Scott worked double shifts, keeping the place open until the last skier had passed through town.
On weekends and holidays, traffic would back up at the stoplight two blocks to the west. Families would let their children out several blocks east of the Dairy Freeze to place an order. By the time the car pulled into the driveway, the food was ready, recalled longtime customer Eric Erickson of Renton.
In 1969, the Scotts sold the business to their daughter and son-in-law, Pat and Bob Baker. They operated The Freeze — as it is known in North Bend — until 1990, when it was purchased by Hearing.
The Bakers suffered through the lowest point for the business in 1978: the opening of Interstate 90, which bypasses downtown North Bend. It took a few years to acquire a loyal following of both local customers and outsiders.
"The Scotts had a captive audience when Highway 10 went through," Hearing said.
"Now we have to woo them off the freeway."
Sherry Grindeland can be reached at 206-515-5633 or sgrindeland@seattletimes.com.