Remember When Quincy, Illinois Had a Burger Chef Until 1978?

I thought I was crazy when I asked a friend about what I remembered as Burger Chef when my family would drive to Quincy from Hannibal during the early 1970's. In this case, I was not hallucinating. Quincy did have a Burger Chef until early in 1978 when it suddenly closed its doors.

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Chalk this one up to some curiosity and some time on Google. I was able to confirm that there really was a Burger Chef in Quincy, Illinois thanks to a share from the Illinois Memories Facebook page from a couple years ago. The Burger King in Quincy opened on May 10, 1968. Good news is that I wasn't imagining it.

You might remember that during its heyday, Burger Chef had Eve Plumb (aka Jan Brady of Brady Bunch fame) as their singing spokesperson.

The Burger Chef was located at 18th and Broadway in Quincy up until early in 1978. I found an archived article from the Quincy Herald-Whig on March 1, 1978 which said the owner announced it had closed in February of 1978.

The owners of Burger Chef invented the flame broiler, so you can thank them for that.

What happened to the Quincy Burger Chef and why did it close?

The demise of Burger Chef didn't have anything to do with the Quincy location specifically, but historians on YouTube claim there was a murder at a Burger Chef in Speedway, Indiana late in 1978. Four Burger Chef employees were found murdered in a field and the case remains unsolved 45 years later.

MeTV says it was more than one reason that eventually caused Burger Chef to fail including "overambitious expansion, a sudden spike in competition and a dash of crime". That sums it up. Burger Chef was purchased by Hardee's for $44 million dollars in 1981.

The Quincy, Illinois location closed before the tragedy in Indiana so that obviously played no part in why Burger Chef eventually transitioned to other businesses. If you are old enough to remember Burger Chef, you're not crazy either. It really was a staple in Quincy at 18th and Broadway for better part of a decade.