I think the magic of the Ollie Burger is lost on us. It seldom appears on any best burger lists. Even yours truly has largely overlooked it in recent years. That’s odd since I once wrote a complete history of Ollie’s Trolley for an online publication called The Bitter Southerner.
The history of Ollie’s Trolley − a once mighty burger chain with more than 100 locations − is fascinating. Ollie’s was the brainchild of former Kentucky governor and Kentucky Fried Chicken owner John Y. Brown. The burger itself was invented by a man named Ollie Gleichenhaus who ran a popular Miami burger stand that attracted the likes of Dean Martin, Rodney Dangerfield and Don Rickles.
Brown told Gleichenhaus he wanted to buy the recipe and make him the next Colonel Sanders, to which the grouchy Gleichenhaus responded, “Go (expletive) yourself,” before eventually caving for a million bucks.
Ollie’s grew like wildfire in the 1970s before Brown himself doused the flames. The problem? It didn’t have a drive-thru. Only three Ollie’s Trolleys remain, all of them independently owned. One in Louisville, one in Washington D.C., and one right here in Cincinnati’s West End. Ours is owned by Marvin Smith, who runs it out of a walk-up window at a red trolley surrounded by toy cars and random ephemera. Paintings of Black leaders such as Frank Allison and Mark Mallory decorate the brick wall behind it.