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Of Juicy Burgers and Slamming Doors

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Written by Dirk Burhans

Location, Zoning, and Savvy Ownership keeps 1920's-era Neighborhood Shop in the Running

Sara Debold, owner of the Lee Street Deli

Neighborhood shops. My childhood home town of the 1960s in southeastern Ohio had a half-dozen that I recall. As far as I know, they're all gone now.

Mostly, they sold candy, soda pop, and sandwiches. Some had unfinished oak floors, the woodgrain raised smooth and wavy from decades of buffing by customer's shoes. Others had floors of black & white checked linoleum. The ones that I recall invariably had screen doors that announced entry with a jingly little metal bell... after which they slammed shut, never quite closing all the way, because the warped door no longer fit the frame.

For some, the focus was groceries, with white-bread sandwiches added because patrons also wanted lunch. Others specialized as newstands, with a cylindrical rack of comic books in the front window, but selling candy & gum on the side. Some even found their niche as bait shops, selling nightcrawlers for fishing, while including snacks, candy, and drinks. One that my friends and I biked to from home was "Jack's Confectionery," which had a soda fountain in addition to candy.

My present home town of Columbia, Missouri records at least 40 neighborhood shops going into the 1950s, with names like Lorton's, Bob's, Da-Nite, and Ealy's. Today, the city of Columbia has at least nine modern supermarkets for a population of about 90,000. When one thinks on it, it's not such a wonder that there should have been 40 such neighborhoods when the town had 30,000 people in the 1950s. If you scrunched those 40 neighborhood shops from the 1950s into supermarkets and multiplied everything by three to account for the population increase, the result would probably be about nine supermarkets.

The bigger wonder is that one of those 40 family-owned neighborhood shops in Columbia Missouri survives today. The Lee Street Deli (formerly Lee Street Shop), located in a residential neighborhood called "East Campus" near the University of Missouri, has been resolutely serving sandwiches and snacks to neighborhood inhabitants in the same location since 1927.

Why has it persisted when the others failed?

"A lot of reasons," said Sara DeBold, the current Lee Street Deli manager. "I think one is the location of it.... it's grandfathered in. It's the only [business] allowed on East Campus. So it's not like you could knock it down and build a McDonald's here. Maybe in the future, they'll be able to, but..."

Tall, athletic, and outdoorsy, DeBold has worked at the Lee Street Deli for 3 years. She herself only graduated from the University of Missouri the past year, with a double major in agricultural journalism and forestry.

"The other thing is that it's also rental property, so the upstairs is rented out... financially it makes sense to keep the whole thing open, because you can rent out the upstairs and keep the downstairs [shop] open."

The most popular menu item? The Juicy Burger, a sloppy-joe sandwich that has been served for at least the entire 17 years I've patronized the shop. Currently, it retails for only $1.60. Why so popular?

"I know if I'm getting something cheap, I like to pile as much stuff on it as I can," said DeBold. "People who get the regular Juicy Burger get it with the works – mustard, ketchup, pickle, onion."

For years, the Juicy Burger has pretty much remained Lee Street's flagship item, plus the standard fare of neighborhood shops: candy, soda, chips, crackers, and ice cream, with a smattering of things like tuna salad sandwiches (see early 1990s menu board, photo). Older incarnmations of the shop featured groceries, cereal, and laundry detergent. Under today's new management, a lot has changed. Groceries and household items have gone. And in much the way that fast food venues have added salads and wraps to stay current, the Lee Street Deli (whose initials on logoed t-shirts and mugs proclaim "LSD") now carries menu items like: the "Flaming Penguin" (a Juicy Burger with wing sauce, pepper jack, and jalapenos) or the "Horsey Ham & Beef" (ham, roast beef, cheddar, olives, onions, and horse radish). While the old menu was a backlit plastic letter board (photo), the new one is a much hipper chalkboard that lists menu items in multi-colored handwriting. Where the previous sandwiches were served on white bread or hamburger buns, today's Lee Street offers 7 bread choices, including sourdough, rye, and wheat hoagies... not including three flavors of wrap. They also carry a variety salads and breakfast items.

Who are the people keeping such a place in business?

"During the school year, probably 90 percent students," said DeBold. "But we get a lot of construction workers in here. Actually, we get them all year 'round, but we really get to know them in the summer, when there's not as many students around. A lot of people from the chemistry building. There's a group of TA's that come in here every day."

On the morning I visited, Jordan Rothstein, a communications major, ordered a sausage egg & cheese biscuit with everything on it, plus hash browns. "They've got good food, and the prices are reasonable," Rothstein explained to me, when I asked what he likes about the place – adopting a nutritional rationale that has likely applied to students since Aristotle studied under Plato.

In addition to the food itself, other concessions to contemporary dining sensibilities have helped keep Lee Street relevant. Outside, a trellised garden patio, where painted picnic tables sit on Ozark river gravel amidst roses and hibiscus, beckons to lunchers eager for fresh air and sunshine. On the day I visited, the East Ash Street Band was booked to play an acoustic show in the patio at 4:00 in the afternoon. In a neighborhood adjoining fraternities and student housing, such an event is a sure crowd pleaser for Lee Street; adding a keg of free beer to the mix couldn't hurt (Lee Street doesn't have a license to sell alcohol).

And yes, there is a jingly little metal bell on the screen door that rings when customers enter and exit the shop.

Others involved with the shop remain respectful about its neighborhood role. Now general manager of a community radio station, David Owens' parents bought the shop in 1957. Owens learned to count change working in his parent's store. When his mother ran errands, Owens recalled, "my brother and I would be left to tend shop. My middle name is Lee, my parents owned the Lee Street Shop, and I went to Lee Elementary School. It was a big mnemonic thing for me."

"The store started as a convenience to the neighbors," Owens added. "There was always enough walk-in business from the neighborhood to keep it viable. They still have that. With the price of gas the way it is now, Lee Street will have to do something really, really wrong to lose its raison d'être."

John Leigers, and his then girlfriend (now wife), Heather O'Connor, ran the shop from 1997-2000. "Other neighborhood shops didn't have a university across the street from them with pedestrian students on their way to and from class every day," said Leigers. O'Connor agrees; "That's a big factor. Of course, we had regulars from Hickman High, city workers, university faculty, and others. I believe people like the idea of patronizing a place that they see as something of an institution."

It wasn't always such a sure thing. Pat Gerke, a previous owner in the 1990s, fought a zoning battle in 1997 to keep the shop alive in the residential neighborhood. At the time, Gerke was selling the shop, but wanted it to be competitive with businesses on the adjacent burgeoning campus. Leigers and O'Connor bought the shop from her, and while they too ended up selling it, they remain respectful of its legacy.

"Once a place makes it past a certain number of years, it's got this iconic status," said Leigers.

"It's not only locally unique," added O'Connor; "it's a piece of history."

The message has filtered down one generation to DeBold, who, although barely out of college herself, carries on the tradition of enlightened management.

"It's kind of a historical landmark; it's had really good owners, who don't want to see it go," she said. "They tend not to turn it over and the property value is pretty high, so they just hold onto it... maybe sell it to someone else in ten years.

"In the meantime, we're keeping it up."