Kidd Valley changed hands (and you didn't notice)

It's enough to cause a major case of Northwest nostalgia. Staples of the Seattle eating scene being sold faster than the Miss Bud streaking down the backstretch on race day. What a comfort, then, to discover that a city institution can survive a sale and thrive - without losing its soul.

Kidd Valley, the little burger joint that's multiplied itself into 11 locations from Renton to the Northgate Mall, is celebrating its 25th birthday this summer. And while its much-loved made-to-order burgers, hand-mixed shakes and signature fried mushrooms are cooked to the same specs they always were, ownership quietly passed hands 11 years ago. The fact that few knew, and still don't, makes both founder John Morris and the new proprietors smile. They wanted it that way. And, all indications suggest, it's going to stay that way.

Understanding how it happened, and why, requires going back to the beginning, in 1975, on the busy corner of Northeast 55th Street and 25th Avenue Northeast. Morris, a North End kid who'd graduated from Roosevelt High in the '60s, had been running the Duchess Tavern just up the street and getting his lunch at what was then the Dairy Delight on the corner. He was looking in the paper for new business opportunities one day when he saw an ad with a familiar phone number - the Dairy Delight's. He went over, slipped in the back door, and asked owner Mike Funaro if he really wanted to sell.

"Mike took off his apron and started putting it around me," Morris recalls. "He said, `You want the place?' I said, `Let me think about it.' He said, `What's to think about?' I said, `I don't have any money.' He said, `It doesn't matter.' "

Morris was interested in more than the business. "There was a girl across the street who'd told me she didn't like me as much as I liked her," he said. "I thought, if I buy this place and she sees how industrious I am, maybe she'll change her mind." He bought the business and soon went knocking in search of the girl. She was gone, for good. Only the business was left to pour his heart into. It wasn't hard.

Like most new business owners, Morris saw opportunity, a chance to make changes, to do things his way. He remembered childhood days with the family at Camp Kid, an old logging stop in a valley beside Mount St. Helens, and the nearby store where they fixed yummy homestyle burgers and thick shakes. Morris added a "d" to the camp's name and changed the Delight to Kidd Valley, then set about changing the food, too. He wanted it all made to order with fresh, local ingredients whenever possible. It became a mission to serve his burgers char-broiled, to bring in Walla Walla sweets when he could; he'd get fresh fruit and local berries for the shakes, and they'd be hand-dipped. He'd offer fried mushrooms as a house specialty.

Customers took note, and the concept took hold. Morris brought in his brother Bob, and partners Al and Pam Adams at Green Lake, all committed to the concept. "We'd send buns back if they weren't baked right, and we were constantly searching for the right lettuce," Morris said. All of it "was a passion," he said, down to having pickle-tasting contests to decide which ones they liked best.

By 1989, Morris had expanded to seven stores - all run by a close-knit group of people who "felt like family." Then a man from Portland stopped by with a proposition.

He was interested in buying a business for his sons. Did Morris have a price?

By then, Morris owned a water park near Lake Chelan, was managing 100 or so people in the burger business, and began realizing that "to keep it on an upward trajectory was going to require more than I had." He named a price. He also made a call to a respected acquaintance who'd once told him to just say the word if he ever wanted to sell.

Portland dropped out; the other man - Jim Seaver - stayed in.

Seaver told Morris how he'd once worked for another local hamburger outfit that went under when new owners tried to change it, how he thought it had been a huge mistake to mess with success. Morris came to believe that wouldn't happen if he sold to Seaver's outfit. He did.

The outfit was - is - a Seattle icon, serving food since 1938. Kidd Valley's new owners were the folks at Ivar's, people who'd already proven their ability to hang onto a concept long after the original owner was gone.

"You just knew these people were going to do what it took" to maintain the integrity of his mission, says Morris. There was nothing in writing; "it was just an understanding and an honor."

Ivar's president Scott Kingdon says both he and Seaver grew up here. "We thought we had a pretty good feel for the area," he says, and they recognized a certain synergy between the Ivar's way of doing things and Morris's: using fresh not frozen products, keeping it simple, "doing everything right in the back room," not in some faraway commissary.

When they first went in, Kingdon says, they thought they might make a few small changes, "but when we looked around, we went, hmmmmm, there's not much to tweak here." In fact, they still use the original specs on all the food, and send samples to a lab at least once a month to stay steady.

Kingdon says they didn't really want customers to know Kidd Valley had changed hands. "People would start thinking about us differently," maybe assume that they were only interested in getting bigger. Until just a few years ago, the two parts of the company even kept separate phone numbers.

But after 11 years, they figure they've made their intentions clear. That doesn't mean they haven't considered "marrying the two" in some fashion. But installing them side by side under separate management at the Northgate food court is as close as they've come.

They won't go any further unless they figure out how to maintain the identities and unique niches of each. "We don't want to tarnish either brand where there's high customer loyalty for both," Kingdon says. That includes sticking to the folksy image and basic fare that brought them to where they are now. At Kidd Valley, that translates to more than a million burgers and sandwiches a year; 400,000 of those fresh shakes, too.

Have they ever thought of taking the Valley out of state? "We like Seattle," Kingdon says, and have no interest in going anywhere else. Besides, he says, "we've got so much growth room right here . . . a lot of folks know us, but a lot don't."

Because tourists and transplants to other parts of the country have spread the word on Ivar's, it's a little different story. Ivar's chowder is now marketed out of state, and next spring the company will open its first seafood bar in California. Even so, says Kingdon, "we don't have to grow. We take a nice pace here."

And they're hanging onto another piece of Seattle's unpretentious, comfortable old self. Says Kingdon with satisfaction: "We're taking something that John Morris did a good job with and holding on to another Northwest institution." He thinks they make the best burger in town.

Morris says that's exactly what he intended to do when he opened the first store.

Does he ever go back to taste for himself? "My wife and kids go," he says, "but it's funny, I just don't . . . Now that I think about it, though, I feel like going back there and standing at that little window that I built" at the 55th Street store.

If he does, he'll likely go for his favorite, the bacon cheeseburger. And just as likely, he'll be pleasantly unsurprised.

Kathleen Triesch Saul can be reached at 206-464-2209. Her e-mail address is: ktriesch@seattletimes.com.