ST. GEORGE — A few months after its neon burger-carrying boy in sunglasses went dark, Larsen’s Frostop is coming back.
The drive-in burger joint at 858 E. St. George Blvd., which dates back to the 1960s, closed its doors in December after it was sold to a local developer. That developer has leased the site to some of the owners of nearby Morty’s Cafe, who are “soft reopening” the restaurant to work out the kinks before a formal grand opening sometime in the spring.
It will still be known as Larsen’s Frostop. It will still offer drive-in, carhop service. And to answer the most frequently asked question: Yes, the popular Piccadilly chips will be back.
“We were definitely bringing that one back – that is the most requested item,” said Preston Parker, the co-owner of both Morty’s and now, the Frostop. He said he knew the importance of the thick, square, English-style fries after meeting with St. George City officials. “As I’m leaving the meeting, one of the city workers … that’s exactly what he said to me: ‘Are the Piccadilly chips coming back?’”
Parker, a Logan resident, leased a building that had previously been Maverik at 702 E. St. George Blvd. and converted it into a location in 2019 for Morty’s Cafe – an upscale burger and sandwich restaurant that he co-founded in Logan in 2014. Parker said Frostop, which sits about a block and half from Morty’s, will share a management team but will not share a menu and only some of the owners. The plan is for the two to complement each other.
“(Morty’s Cafe) is sort of fast-casual. We’re not fast food, but we’re not a gourmet burger. It’s high quality and a little higher price,” Parker said. “Frostop … the burgers will be there and they will be kind of a staple, but it’s really going to be known for its shakes and its sides.”
That includes the return of many old favorites, including the Piccadilly chips, though Parker said to expect a more organized menu.
“The side items, the unique items that people tell me, are you keeping this? Are you keeping that? And my answer is yes, we’re keeping that,” Parker said. That includes items like the Larry Special, which Parker said the new management made sure to get the recipe for from the previous owners.
Also returning will be the carhop, drive-in service that has been in place since the very beginning that is a reminder of the “American Grafitti” era that Larsen’s began in.
“We’re definitely doing the car hopping so you can drive up in your car,” Parker said. “I’ve had people tell me, I want to be able to stay in my pajamas and come and get a shake and a burger.”
Along with the side dishes and the car hopping, the Frostop has the advantage of already having a built-in nostalgia that few other new restaurants in St. George could hope for.
When the Frostop closed in December, residents came by and wrote their nostalgic memories on a sign posted under the drive-in awning. Many others exchanged stories on social media of first dates, afterschool and postgame celebrations and other fond memories of going to the Frostop.
Among those with fond memories is St. George’s mayor.
“It was a place to gather back when I was in high school,” Mayor Michelle Randall said. “Frostop has been a staple in this community for many years.”
But before Parker came forward with his proposal, the Frostop nearly became nothing more than memory.
Frostop nearly went away for a ‘national chain’
When Mark III Investments LLC, purchased the restaurant site for $940,000 from the restaurant’s third owners, Kim and Andra Garrett, on Dec. 17, one of the new owners, Jon Walter, said he was taking proposals for someone to either operate a restaurant or lease the site.
Walter, also a manager at St. George real estate firm NAI Excel, told St. George News at the time that they weren’t just going to lease the property to anyone. Even though he was someone who grew up in St. George, Walter said he and his partners were ultimately looking for someone that had the financial backing to sustain a restaurant at the site for the long term.
But, Parker said, many of those who came calling had the massive financial backing of national restaurant brands with no intention of keeping the Frostop and its history around.
“They told me that they had received five offers. And several of them were for national chains who were just going to come in and knock down the building and build their own building,” Parker said. “It would have been a national chain right there. So that made it even more important in my mind for our proposal to get accepted.”
Parker’s offer was the only one that wanted to retain the location under the Frostop banner that also had the financial backing, Parker said, to keep it going indefinitely.
“They wanted a long-term contract. I wanted a long-term contract, so it worked out for both of us,” Parker said. “Part of that was our ability at Morty’s Cafe. We have the same thing … we’ve got a long-term contract in that space. We’re in this for the long haul.”
The long-term contract helped the proposal win, Parker said. So did the plan to continue the Frostop and its history.
“We wanted the brand, the look, the menu, largely to remain the same,” Parker said. “We wanted people to be able to come back and they could relive some of their memories that they had of their childhood.”
Updating history
Gale and Darlene Larsen, parents-in-law of current St. George City Councilmember Natalie Larsen, opened the drive-in as a franchisee of the then-prosperous Frostop root beer cafe franchise in November 1965. Parker said he has not only received the blessing and support from Natalie Larsen but from the rest of the City Council as well.
For at least its first decade, the sign along the boulevard was then topped by a giant, rotating root beer mug sign that was replaced in the mid-1980s by the current large neon boy with a giant burger sign. The old mug sign is now in a museum in Billings, Montana.
The current sign isn’t going to a museum anytime soon, but it will be getting a touch-up at some point – just not right away.
“We can paint it. We can’t change it. We can’t change what it is without the city’s permission, but we can repaint it, and it needs repainting,” Parker said, adding that he expects that will happen sometime in the summer.
Parker said the building needs some work beyond just a coat of paint, but much of it won’t be completed for at least a year. Among the biggest work, he said, is the building’s ventilation, which needs at least a year of work.
“Something that people need to understand is we’re remodeling this building over the next two years because there’s some extensive remodels that need to happen.”
And it isn’t Parker’s first rodeo. Along with turning a former gas station into Morty’s, Parker has a history of saving and giving new life to other historic eateries.
In Logan, Parker and his team purchased Logan’s Heroes, a local sandwich shop, and retained its more than 30 years of history in 2018.
“We had already done this in Logan where we had basically saved a local treasure so that the community could return,” Parker said. “The owner of Logan’s Heroes told us that he was retiring and just going to close the business down. We came in, gave him an offer, and we kept the business going in a way that it’s still the same yet it feels updated. That’s what we’re going to do with Larsen’s.”
While many renovations are still to come, Parker said the restaurant’s interior now has an “updated look.” The outside will still need work, but the guts have already had a transplant: walls have been taken down, floors opened up, new piping and electrical put in, the kitchen remodeled and new equipment added.
“We’ve remodeled the entire inside, but we’ve done it in a way that someone would walk in and they would feel like it’s not remodeled,” Parker said. “It will feel different, but you won’t quite know what feels different about it.”
Revitalized boulevard, catering to employees
When the Frostop closed in the winter, some questioned whether restaurants and other businesses along the boulevard would also close their doors. But that bitter chill has given way to spring with the Frostop and other restaurants and businesses on the boulevard either opening up or under construction.
That includes the soon-to-open first Southern Utah location for the popular Salt Lake City ROCTACO “freestyle taco” restaurant in the space that was once Even Stevens. Further down the boulevard, interior work is active on the long-awaited, first-outside Las Vegas location for Pinkbox Doughnuts, which was first announced back in 2019. Work is also ongoing on The Picklr, which will provide indoor pickleball courts, where Walgreens used to be.
“It’s great to see things opening up on the boulevard again,” Randall said, both of new and old businesses. “ I hope our community will patronize these businesses and help keep them sustainable.”
Southern Utah commercial districts are still full of “Now Hiring” signs – the kind of signs that many businesses that closed in the last year cited as a reason they could no longer sustain their business.
Economists say a record low unemployment rate in Utah is combining with inflation woes where minimum wage is cutting it even less than before to reduce the available workforce.
But Parker said while he is still open to hiring others, the reopening Larsen’s Frostop already has a full staff with a general manager, assistant manager and 15 other employees, some of who are coming back from the previous ownership.
Parker said the labor shortage needs business owners to be more creative and innovative in their thinking, and a big part of it is the treatment and compensation of employees.
“That’s not just about the per hour or per year money,” he said. “It’s about tips. It’s about bonuses. It’s about opportunities for growth.”
He said that means emphasizing quality products and experience that can lead to a few extra dollars in the tip.
But it also means that eatery owners need to realize the younger workforce is a different kind of employee now than what was expected for such businesses in the past. And he said blaming the recent COVID-19 pandemic is a cop-out.
“This is not just because of COVID-19. It was happening before COVID-19, where there was a changing from the millennials to the Generation Z,” Parker said. “Adaptive adaptability and flexibility is of paramount interest to that generation. So to lock them into a schedule that they’re expected to work 20 to 40 hours a week … . If there’s no flexibility, that does not work for them.”
Another part of understanding the Generation Z workforce, Parker said, is providing a more pressure-free workplace.
“This current generation cares about low stress,” he said. “They want low-stress environments. They want growth opportunities as long as they don’t come at them too fast so that they can feel like they can adapt to it. They do want to be viewed as a trustworthy individual, but that has a different definition for them than what it has meant to prior generations.”
Parker said the staff of the Frostop has already been training for the last week or so. And like a Broadway show that holds previews before the actual opening night, or sports teams that have a preseason, the Frostop opened its doors back up Wednesday night and over the coming days will test out its updates to see what’s working and what’s not before officially opening.
“We’re just going to open the doors and let word of mouth get out. And then the team can continue their training with the public,” Parker said. “The big grand opening with the ribbon cutting will come later.”
An exact date for the grand opening will be dependent on how the next few weeks go. Parker said the actual grand opening date will be announced on the Frostop’s Facebook page.
“We really need to refine things and be confident that we can handle a huge rush of people,” he said. “We’re just really excited about keeping a local icon going in the community. ”
Editor’s note 8:30 p.m., April 28, 2022. Corrected that Parker resides in Logan. Additional information on the grand opening.
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