Fred & Red’s Chili restaurant in Joplin, Mo., is slated to close for good in mid-April after 88 years in business, reported the Joplin Globe.
Owner Larry Wilcoxson, 69, has worked at the restaurant for over 50 years. It’s such an institution, it has its own Wikipedia article.
The newspaper said:
His daughter, Amber Wilcoxson Tankersley, announced via social media Monday that her father “has decided that it is time to hang up his grease stained chili apron and try his hand at retirement. Fred & Red’s will close its doors as near to April 15 as possible.” […]
The business was started in 1923 by Fred Herring, a miner, in a building at 10th and Main streets. Herring’s chili counter had 10 stools. The restaurant was known for its hamburgers, chili and tamales. Herring decided to experiment one day and ladle his chili over a plate of spaghetti. It would become the signature dish for Fred and Red’s.
The restaurant would expand and relocate in 1941, when Grover Crumbliss won a poker hand from the late Burl Garvin, a Joplin Realtor for many years. Garvin was unable to pay and offered Crumbliss the title to what then was a cornfield at 1719 S. Main St. A poultry house was located next door.
Wilcoxson said Crumbliss approached Herring about the land and enticed him to build a new restaurant there that would more than double the size of his existing restaurant. The new one would have 23 stools.
The restaurant’s address places it a little less than a mile south of Seventh Street, aka Route 66, in Joplin.
Fred & Red’s isn’t the oldest chili restaurant in the region, though. Ike’s Chili, which sits on the Admiral Place alignment of Route 66 in Tulsa, has been going for more than 100 years.
UPDATE: The Ace Jackalope blog has a great entry about Fred & Red’s, with lots of photos.