Erma Visocnik passed away in 1977. Her husband, Max, died in 1995. Their iconic restaurant location in German Village will meet its end on Aug. 7.
For the first time in close to 60 years, German Village will be without a Max and Erma's.
The original location of what became a regional restaurant chain — with more than 100 stores at its peak — is being closed by its owner, Glacier Restaurant Group, saying it wasn't viable.
The chain hasn't been locally owned in a decade, a casualty of corporate meltdowns and ownership shuffles, but the quaint spot it occupied at 739 S. Third St. since 1958 is still iconic around these parts.
"Oh, that's just ridiculous," said Bob Welcher, president of Restaurant Consultants Inc., when he heard the news. "That just blows me away."
Welcher likens the loss to the closing of the original Wendy's a decade ago.
James Blystone, spokesman for Montana-based Glacier, said in a statement that, "After a thorough review of available options, the building could no longer maintain the standards customers deserve."
The building has been sold to an entity called 739 German Village LLC, which can be traced to an office in Gahanna for Stage Capital, an investment group. Attempts to reach Stage Capital were unsuccessful.
The small German Village location was bought by the Visocniks in 1958.
The couple sold it in 1972 to Barry Zacks and Todd Barnum. Zacks and Barnum kept the name, but little else, adopting a new menu, adding zany decor, in-booth telephones, and other novelties including a bathtub sundae bar. Zacks and Barnum franchised the chain and took it public.
Barnum, who left the company in 2007 and now teaches entrepreneurship at Ohio State University's Fisher College of Business, said the sale of the original Max and Erma's is disheartening.
Zacks said he had been to TGI Friday's in New York City and wanted to build a similar concept, centered on hand-crafted hamburgers, here in Columbus, Barnum said.
As they scouted locations, Max and Erma's in German Village had exactly what they were looking for — a liquor license, he said.
"The German Village location just worked," Barnum said. "It was a success right from the beginning."
Yet, as Barnum said, nothing lasts forever. Max and Erma's as a chain has been in decline for a decade.
The company was sold to a private-equity group in 2008, bought out of bankruptcy in 2010 and sold again to Glacier in 2016. Along the way, the company has shed dozens of stores, whittling itself down from more than 100 at its peak to 39, the head count after the German Village store closes.
Glacier has also transformed a pair of Max and Erma's, one on Polaris Parkway and the other in northern Kentucky, into one of its other, growing concepts — MacKenzie River Pizza Grill.
Blystone added in the statement from Glacier that the employees of the restaurant have been offered jobs at other Max and Erma's locations. The company will also keep the brand's management team in Columbus.
The statement also reiterated that, "Max & Erma's brand and other locations are not going anywhere; and the heritage of the German Village Max & Erma's will be visible and alive at other locations."
Like the first Wendy's, which opened Downtown in 1969, for customers outside of central Ohio, the German Village location might not matter, but it still carries meaning for the brand, Welcher said. When he ran the chain, Barnum always took visiting restaurant managers to German Village to experience the site. On the company's website, the German Village store proudly proclaims itself "THE ORIGINAL."
"Doing something like this really undermines the core and foundation of a brand," Welcher said. "People are going to be upset. You don't mess with tradition. There are consequences."
While the closing is a blow, for sure, it's nothing compared to the storm Max and Erma's faces in the casual-dining market segment, which has seen the pummeling of brands like Friday's, Applebee's, Bob Evans and many others.
"It is a very tough business today. Really, really tough," Barnum said.
"You don't last forever."
jmalone@dispatch.com
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