The odds clearly were stacked against Tom Wahl becoming a successful restaurateur when he bought a franchised ice cream and root beer stand and plunked it in Avon.

The population was sparse — 4,400 in Avon and 44,000 in all of Livingston County.

But it was 1955 and Wahl, a 23-year-old just out of the Army with a young wife and a child on the way, took a gamble. He bought an acre of land with 250 feet fronting Routes 5 and 20 and set up a Twin Kiss stand. He had taken a job selling Twin Kiss franchises in New York state a few months earlier, and he became his first customer.

Two years and three franchise sales later, he decided that he was better off running a stand than trying to sell them. He gave up the sales job and added ground steak sandwiches and hot dogs to his menu. And in the process he changed the habits of thousands of Monroe County diners.

Wahl, who in 1986 sold the business that still carries his name, did not popularize the hamburger restaurant. People like Don Barbato, Bill Gray and Vic and Irv Annus had already done that by opening stands near the Lake Ontario shoreline in Sea Breeze. What Wahl did was convince people to get into their cars and drive 20 miles or more for America's comfort food — burgers, fries, ice cream and shakes.

He achieved it by throwing himself headfirst into the business and by marketing his product heavily in Rochester.

"I unloaded the trucks, I cooked, I hired the help, I did my own accounting, even did the payroll for 10 or 15 years,'' the 74-year-old Wahl said earlier this month from his West Bloomfield home. "My goal from the start was to be the best stand in the world. And cost was absolutely no object when it came to buying something. We would buy the best and then raise our prices to cover it. And it worked because we were out in the middle of nowhere and we had to make it work. And we made it a brand.''

Half a century later, the restaurant has expanded into a nine-store chain, including locations at the Rochester area's three major malls. And Wahl's long-term vision seems to have paid off: The Avon store is still the chain's sales leader.

"Tom sort of bridged the gap between the drive-in restaurant and the family restaurant,'' said Rochester Institute of Technology business professor Robert Barbato, the son of the Don & Bob's founder. "You could go in there and it still had the flavor of a drive-in. But you would go to the window to get your food, like what fast food became.''

In the beginning

A month after Wahl started selling soft ice cream and frosted mugs of root beer, Ray Kroc opened his first McDonald's Family Restaurant in Des Plains, Ill. Fast food was about to go national. But Wahl had no desire to expand much beyond his Avon location. He did, however, have a strong desire to expand his single spot. "There was enough population within 10 miles to support a Twin Kiss ice cream stand,'' Wahl said. "But if I wanted to increase business, I had to promote very heavily, which I did.''

By the mid-'50s, a decade after the end of World War II, the automobile was becoming more and more a staple in the American household. It was less a luxury and more a necessity as dependence on a deteriorating mass transit system began to wane.

Wahl recognized the trend and peppered the Rochester area with advertising. He took out weekly ads in the Democrat and Chronicle and Times-Union. He sponsored the noon news on WHAM radio. He wrote his own copy, did his own radio spots. He had as many as 11 billboards throughout the area.

He sponsored Pop Warner football and Little League baseball teams. He offered free coupons. Anything to get folks out of Monroe County and into their cars for a drive to the country.

Later, Wahl enhanced the experience by adding a pavilion that seated 280 and offered free weekly concerts in the summer. In 1976, he added indoor seating for the first time. Three years later, he expanded from a March-to-November to a year-round business. And over the first 25 years, he expanded the business at a compounded annual rate of nearly 19 percent by attracting locals and tourists.

"Our tourist business accounted for as much as 20 percent of our annual business — one-stop people,'' he said. "By the mid-1970s, we would serve 4,000 people on a summer Sunday. We were averaging 20,000 people a week. We'd sell 250,000 mugs of root beer in a typical year.''

And once people came, they kept coming back.

McDonald's sold hamburgers that were 10 to a pound for 15 cents. Wahl sold ground steaks that were 3½ to the pound for 40 cents. He brewed his own root beer and sold it for a dime a mug, worked behind the grill himself and developed a remarkably loyal following.

Memories

"We started dating in 1955 and we were there a lot,'' said Sandy Schlenker of West Bloomfield. "We still go down there. And the food is still good.''

In fact, she and her husband, Corky, bought a station wagon in 1973 that had cup holders in the back "just so our kids could eat in the station wagon. That's before they had a place to sit.''

The memories linger.

"Tom would be cooking and he'd smile and wave to us,'' she recalled. "We'd say 'extra pickles,' and he'd give us a big dish of them. We loved that place.''

"Texas (hot) with ketchup and a vanilla shake, that's what I had growing up,'' said Steve Harrison of Avon, who was born the year Wahl opened. "Now I'm trying to eat healthier. I love their fish sandwiches.''

Don Barbato and his family also would eat at Tom Wahl's.

"My dad used to take us all the time,'' Bob Barbato recalled. "We liked to go for car rides. That's how we relaxed. Television was not that interesting in those days. Kids didn't have soccer practice every day.''

And business was much less cutthroat. Here's an example: Wahl had been cooking his burgers at 350 degrees. "This big bull of a man stopped in and said, 'What the hell are you doing there? You don't know how to cook those things. Turn up the grill,'" Wahl recalled. "So I turn it up 50 degrees, then another 50. I got to 500-and-something degrees. What a difference that made! It seared it, kept the juices in, cooked it quickly.''

The big bull of a man who offered the advice was Bill Gray.

While Gray's tip resulted in quick cooking, Wahl's never called its offerings fast food.

"We weren't fast food, we were great food fast,'' says Wahl's son, Tom Jr., who concocted the secret Wahlburger sauce and partnered with his father for a while at a Brockport restaurant before becoming a stockbroker. He's now a Morgan Stanley senior vice president.

By the late 1970s, Tom Sr. was doing $1 million a year from his single restaurant (years earlier he had sold his interest in a Pittsford eatery to his brother, Bill). He never skimped on help and developed a work force that was as loyal as his customer base.

Steve Harrison's wife, Kathy, had 14 brothers and sisters. "Tom Wahl probably employed 10 of those kids,'' she said. "Just about everybody worked there, all the Avon school kids. He was a great guy to work for, too.''

By the mid-1980s, though, the decades of long days were catching up with Wahl. Good young help was becoming increasingly difficult to find. A venture into gasoline sales next door turned out to be a disaster.

"By the time I was in my mid-50s, I was tired,'' he said.

In retirement

In 1986, he received an offer for the Avon restaurant from a middleman. He told the man to take the restaurant's numbers back to the potential buyer. A few days later, the buyer — it turned out to be a partnership that included Webster grocer Bruce Hegedorn and Bill Gray — nearly doubled the offer. Wahl accepted.

The expanded chain has continued to show steady growth, said Keith Herman, its general manager. And, he added, the company continues to "plow profits into opening new locations or remodeling'' rather than taking them out of the operations.

It's a necessity of today's business environment, he said.

"The nationals (McDonald's, Burger King, Wendy's) are having more and more of a presence,'' he said. "They are very professional and well capitalized. And they are just getting better and better. We just have to stay a step ahead of them.''

After the sale, Wahl spent much of the next 14 years traveling in a motor home with his wife, Annette, visiting all but four states.

Whenever he came home, he would check on Tom Wahl's under its new ownership. He still does, and he likes what he sees. The quality and customer service that had been his hallmark don't seem to have been compromised.

"That's important to me because my name is still on it,'' he said. "And you know what? It's really a classy hamburger chain. I like that.''

Originally published online here: http://www.democratandchronicle.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050529/BUSINESS/505290335/-1/ARCHIVE4