Spangles is a family-owned fast food

Fast food

Fast food is the term given to food that can be prepared and served very quickly. While any meal with low preparation time can be considered to be fast food, typically the term refers to food sold in a restaurant or store with preheated or precooked ingredients, and served to the customer in a...

 chain based in Wichita, Kansas

Wichita, Kansas

Wichita is the largest city in the U.S. state of Kansas.As of the 2010 census, the city population was 382,368. Located in south-central Kansas on the Arkansas River, Wichita is the county seat of Sedgwick County and the principal city of the Wichita metropolitan area...

. It serves 1/3-pound burgers

Hamburger

A hamburger is a sandwich consisting of a cooked patty of ground meat usually placed inside a sliced bread roll...

, flatbread

Flatbread

A flatbread is a simple bread made with flour, water, and salt and then thoroughly rolled into flattened dough. Many flatbreads are unleavened: made without yeast or sourdough culture: although some flatbread is made with yeast, such as pita bread....

 pita

Pita

Pita or pitta is a round pocket bread widely consumed in many Middle Eastern, Mediterranean, and Balkan cuisines. It is prevalent in Greece, the Balkans the Levant, the Arabian Peninsula and Turkey. The "pocket" in pita bread is created by steam, which puffs up the dough...

 wraps, french fries

French fries

French fries , chips, fries, or French-fried potatoes are strips of deep-fried potato. North Americans tend to refer to any pieces of deep-fried potatoes as fries or French fries, while in the United Kingdom, Australia, Ireland and New Zealand, long, thinly cut slices of deep-fried potatoes are...

, onion rings

Onion rings

Onion rings are a form of fast food commonly found in the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Australia, and some parts of Asia. They generally consist of a cross-sectional "ring" of onion dipped in batter or breading and then deep fried; a variant is made with onion paste...

, Lactose free milkshakes and other soft-serve ice cream

Ice cream

Ice cream is a frozen dessert usually made from dairy products, such as milk and cream, and often combined with fruits or other ingredients and flavours. Most varieties contain sugar, although some are made with other sweeteners...

 desserts, cinnamon roll

Cinnamon roll

A cinnamon roll is a sweet pastry served commonly in Northern Europe and North America. It consists of a rolled sheet of yeast dough onto which a cinnamon and sugar mixture is sprinkled over a thin coat of butter...

s of which are made in Yoder, Kansas

Yoder, Kansas

Yoder is a small unincorporated community in Reno County in the south-central part of the U.S. state of Kansas, about 10 miles southeast of the city of Hutchinson on K-96. Although Yoder is unincorporated, with no city government, it does have a U.S. Post Office and its own zip code...

 and are named after the town, and breakfast

Breakfast

Breakfast is the first meal taken after rising from a night's sleep, most often eaten in the early morning before undertaking the day's work...

 sandwiches. Breakfast specialties include sourdough sandwiches, Pitas and Breakfast Bowls. Lunch specialties include the 1/3-pound Gourmet Supreme burger, 1/3-pound Western Burger, 1/3 pound Mushroom Swiss Burger, Sourdough Bacon Swiss, Sourdough Turkey bacon Ranch Sandwich and Grilled Chicken on Pita. Some of the promotional food items that Spangles have served are a Guacamole Bacon Swiss Burger, Asian Chicken Pita, Seafood Krab Pita (a Lenten offering), a Parmesan chicken pita, and a Frito Chili Cheese Bowl. The chain is known for its bizarre, kitschy TV commercials. Unlike restaurants like McDonalds, Spangles offers its full menu until 11:00 a.m. and offers six popular breakfast items the rest of the day.

History

Spangles began as a restaurant named Coney Island in Wichita, Kansas. Brothers Dale and Craig Steven converted a hot dog

Hot dog

A hot dog is a sausage served in a sliced bun. It is very often garnished with mustard, ketchup, onions, mayonnaise, relish and/or sauerkraut.-History:...

 restaurant

Restaurant

A restaurant is an establishment which prepares and serves food and drink to customers in return for money. Meals are generally served and eaten on premises, but many restaurants also offer take-out and food delivery services...

 named Wiener King into their own restaurant and opened in January 1978. Business went well at Coney Island, but in 1984 the Steven brothers decided that the name "Coney Island" was too restrictive since it could not be franchised

Franchising

Franchising is the practice of using another firm's successful business model. The word 'franchise' is of anglo-French derivation - from franc- meaning free, and is used both as a noun and as a verb....

. The company launched a city-wide contest which resulted in the name Spangles.

Some locations are open from 6:30 a.m. to 3 a.m. (drive through only) Hours for a typical store are from 6:30 a.m until 10:00 p.m. for the Dining room and 6:30 a.m. until 11:00 p.m. for drive through customers. The stores feature a 1950s diner look with chrome and neon red exteriors. The interiors play bebop music and include Elvis

Elvis Presley

Elvis Aaron Presley was one of the most popular American singers of the 20th century. A cultural icon, he is widely known by the single name Elvis. He is often referred to as the "King of Rock and Roll" or simply "the King"....

 and Marilyn Monroe

Marilyn Monroe

Marilyn Monroe was an American actress, singer, model and showgirl who became a major sex symbol, starring in a number of commercially successful motion pictures during the 1950s....

 mannequins in dining rooms displaying advertising from the period as well as memorabilia such as neon guitars and jukeboxes. The chain also derives 50% of its revenue from drive-thru orders.. Spangles strives for the drive through orders to be done in 70 seconds or less.

The first Topeka

Topeka, Kansas

Topeka |Kansa]]: Tó Pee Kuh) is the capital city of the U.S. state of Kansas and the county seat of Shawnee County. It is situated along the Kansas River in the central part of Shawnee County, located in northeast Kansas, in the Central United States. As of the 2010 census, the city population was...

 store opening made national news in restaurant trade publications in 2004. . “An average unit volume of over $20,000 a week is considered respectable in the industry — $25,000 to $30,000 would be extremely high,” Dale Steven said. A typical first week for Spangles in Wichita produces $35,000 in sales, a strong number by industry standards, said Dennis Carpenter, CEO of the Kansas Restaurant & Hospitality Association. In its first week, the Topeka Spangles reached $97,000 in sales; cars were wrapped twice around the building with people outside directing traffic

Traffic

Traffic on roads may consist of pedestrians, ridden or herded animals, vehicles, streetcars and other conveyances, either singly or together, while using the public way for purposes of travel...

. .
On April 25, 2006, a store opening in Lawrence, Kansas

Lawrence, Kansas

Lawrence is the sixth largest city in the U.S. State of Kansas and the county seat of Douglas County. Located in northeastern Kansas, Lawrence is the anchor city of the Lawrence, Kansas, Metropolitan Statistical Area, which encompasses all of Douglas County...

, attracted 250 people camping in tent

Tent

A tent is a shelter consisting of sheets of fabric or other material draped over or attached to a frame of poles or attached to a supporting rope. While smaller tents may be free-standing or attached to the ground, large tents are usually anchored using guy ropes tied to stakes or tent pegs...

s who were awaiting the store's 6:30am opening despite a thunderstorm in the area. Campers waited for the grand opening because Spangles offered free food for one year for the first 100 customers. Some campers stayed for as long as 24 hours in improvised forts to protect against the hail

Hail

Hail is a form of solid precipitation. It consists of balls or irregular lumps of ice, each of which is referred to as a hail stone. Hail stones on Earth consist mostly of water ice and measure between and in diameter, with the larger stones coming from severe thunderstorms...

. Spangles framed pictures of the first 100 customers in that store and hung them on the wall of the restaurant. Marsha Sheahan, vice president of public relations for the Greater Topeka Chamber of Commerce, said Spangles is filling a niche

Niche market

A niche market is the subset of the market on which a specific product is focusing; therefore the market niche defines the specific product features aimed at satisfying specific market needs, as well as the price range, production quality and the demographics that is intended to impact...

 that is different than the large chains, such as McDonald's

McDonald's

McDonald's Corporation is the world's largest chain of hamburger fast food restaurants, serving around 64 million customers daily in 119 countries. Headquartered in the United States, the company began in 1940 as a barbecue restaurant operated by the eponymous Richard and Maurice McDonald; in 1948...

, and the slow-paced home style restaurants in the city.

Business for Spangles increased when the restaurant chain doubled its advertising

Advertising

Advertising is a form of communication used to persuade an audience to take some action with respect to products, ideas, or services. Most commonly, the desired result is to drive consumer behavior with respect to a commercial offering, although political and ideological advertising is also common...

 budget to about 4 percent of its revenue

Revenue

In business, revenue is income that a company receives from its normal business activities, usually from the sale of goods and services to customers. In many countries, such as the United Kingdom, revenue is referred to as turnover....

. The company runs major advertising campaigns on local radio station

Radio station

Radio broadcasting is a one-way wireless transmission over radio waves intended to reach a wide audience. Stations can be linked in radio networks to broadcast a common radio format, either in broadcast syndication or simulcast or both...

s, local television station

Television station

A television station is a business, organisation or other such as an amateur television operator that transmits content over terrestrial television. A television transmission can be by analog television signals or, more recently, by digital television. Broadcast television systems standards are...

s, and Cox Cable channels. In addition to the company's slogan, "Spangles, it just tastes better!", the Gourmet Supreme value pack is advertised with the slogan, "$2.99? Are you out of your mind?" In May 2008 the famous $2.99 Gourmet Supreme value pack was raised to $4.99 due to rising costs. The new $2.99 burger is the Classic Burger which was the Gourmet Jr sandwich. The company's advertising firm, digitalBRAND Communications, has been making Spangles TV commercials for nearly 10 years. In 2005, the company produced 23 commercials, nearly one new commercial every two weeks.

Locations

Today, Spangles Inc. has 26 locations in Kansas, with 14 in The Wichita area, 4 in Topeka, 2 in Hutchinson, 2 in Salina, 1 in El Dorado, and 1 in Lawrence with their newest restaurant at 531 S. Andover Road in Andover. The 27th restaurant is scheduled to open in Derby

Rene Steven

A well-known face in the commercials is the Steven brothers' sister Rene Steven, the company's director of operations and spokeswoman. Viewers of the commercials call them "corny" and deride the way Rene Steven speaks. When the company's website launched, she started receiving emails critical of her way of pronouncing "Spangles." In a January 2007 interview, she talked about her reaction to the emails.

“People would e-mail and the whole e-mail would be, any time there was an 's,' they would write the e-mail the way I talk. They would never leave who they were. Chickens. I would always e-mail back something funny. I would e-mail them back just the way they e-mailed me. …It really does bother people, I mean, people think it’s a speech impediment. ... But, you know what, if they have to have to pick something on me, that’s OK.”