The best route out of Huntington, Indiana, is US-224, which cuts through downtown and across the Little River. As you head southeast, something unexpected catches your eye- a strange, angular building peeking out from behind the trees. If you’d driven this stretch twenty-five years ago, that building would’ve pulled you in like a magnet. It was home to Hot ’n Now!
William Van Domelen of Kalamazoo is to thank for Hot ’n Now. Van Domelen was a franchisee of Wendy’s and Burger Chef, but sold most of his stake in twenty Wendy’s outposts in southwestern Michigan to start his new venture1. Driven by its simplistic mix of 39-cent burgers, fries, and soda, the chain grew to more than a hundred locations2!
Hot ’n Now wasn’t just cheap, though. It also offered unique menu items like the Trojan Burger, the Big Hot, and the Deluxe Olive Burger with chopped green olives. Sign me up- I keep a giant jar of olives in my fridge at all times! That olive burger was made for weird flavor freaks like me.
In Indiana, Fort Wayne, Elkhart, Michigan City, and Warsaw were all home to Hot ’n Now restaurants by 1989. Additional locations were planned in Anderson, Muncie, and Richmond3, but I’m not sure they were ever built. I remember the unique architecture of one of Fort Wayne’s at East Coliseum near Sherman, but it’s been home to China Express for as long as I can remember.
PepsiCo bought Hot ’n Now in 1990 and made it part of the company’s Taco Bell division. Van Domelen resigned shortly afterwards4. Taco Bell built Huntington’s Hot ’n Now the following year5, but things soon began to go south: in 1995, Taco Bell closed eighty corporate-owned stores, then sold the entire business in 19966.
Hot ’n Now was still home to fifty-three locations in 2002, but the chain dwindled to forty-four stores by 2003, when it was sold yet again. The chain declared bankruptcy in 20047 and most of the locations closed. Today, a single store persists in Sturgis, Michigan, though another -now known as Burger 81- still serves some of the original menu in Bay City8…