Mugs Up Still Lives

Mugs up Still Lives

    I can remember a lot of wonderful things when I was a boy growing up in the Sheffield area of Northeast in the 1950s. One of my favorite memories were when my friends and I would walk to Mugs Up on Independence Ave and Winner Rd for a 5 cent frosted mug of the world’s best root beer. It really hit the spot on a hot, sticky summer day.We stood in what little shade the roof over the front of the building provided and watched the customers drive in and out of the lot as we finished our drinks. We all agreed that it would be real cool to have a car and cruise the lot.

  Once I got to be a teenager and earned enough money to buy a car I did just that. I drove through the lot every chance I got and took dates there to eat. I just loved the zip burgers, whiz burgers, black cows, chilli dogs, fries and orangearoo’s. The service was so fast that sometimes the carhops were standing there ready to take your order before you put your car in park. It was a great place to sit in your car flirting with the car hops and shooting the breeze with your friends.

  A lot of customers were saddened when they closed Mugs Up in the late 70’s. A brand new Aldi’s now stands where the old orange and white building used to be.

   Unknown to me and probably a lot of other people, there was another Mugs Up on 23^rd st just six blocks east of Noland Road in Independence, Mo. I checked it out today and it’s an identical twin to the one that was in Northeast. Nothing has changed at all. The building is still orange and white and other than a couple of minor changes, the menu reads exactly like it did over 40 years ago when I was a kid growing up in Sheffield.

   When I called the number listed in the phone book, Ann Kendall answered the phone and told me to come on out to Double Nickel Ceramics, a quaint little shop she owns and operates in Blue Springs, Mo. It turns out that Ann is a 1959 graduate of Glennon high school and used to eat at the Mugs Up on Independence Ave as a kid. Her eyes light up when she talks about Mugs Up and its history. She and her husband Bill, who graduated from Northeast high school in 1953, bought the restaurant back in 1978 from a couple that originally started it 23 years earlier. It wasn’t doing too well and they hoped they could turn things around. They decided to name it Bill and Ann’s. Ann said that didn’t work very well at all. They switched the name back to Mugs Up and put the phone number in the book. Almost immediately, they began receiving phone calls asking if this was an actual Mugs Up with the fantastic zip burgers and frosted mugs. With Bill doing the cooking, Ann doing the bookkeeping and the old name back where it belonged, business was off and running.

   On most summer days, 300 or more customers are served and 250 gallons of root beer are sold. They have lost count on how many out of state people stop by that have either heard about them or used to eat at a Mugs Up back when they were growing up. A lot of customers will even take photos of family members standing in front of the building. I asked Ann how they got those mugs so frosty and she told me they dip them in water and set them in a special machine. To my surprise, their famous root beer is still made right in the store.

   Ann did everything from cooking to car hopping for the first 13 years while Bill continued to work as an electrician at his old job. Ann watched over the hundreds of girls that worked for her over the years like a mother hen. She made sure they always did their homework. If they didn’t, she made them set down and do it right then. All eight of their children worked at the restaurant at one time or another. There has even been some romance as one of their kids married a coworker and the other one married a customer.

  Ann turned the place over to Bill when he retired from his electrician job and he has operated the restaurant for 13 years. Counting their combined 26 years and the original owners 23 years, you have a Mugs Up that has been in that same location for 49 years. They plan to come up with some special 50 year anniversary mugs real soon.

  The very first Mugs Up was started at 63^rd and Raytown road by Jim Heavey in the early 1950s. Before long there were franchises in several states including nine locations across Kansas City. Bill and Ann’s Mugs Up was the twenty first one built. Their Independence location and the Mugs Up in Columbia, Missouri are the only two remaining in the country.

  Enough of this nostalgic talk. I’m heading out to Mugs Up to experience some of it first hand.