After 57 years, Maryland Fried Chicken location in Winter Garden, Florida, is closing
After 57 years, Maryland Fried Chicken location in Winter Garden, Florida, is closing
Here's the fascinating story of a store that has barely changed since 1966
With its stepped-gabled roofline that seems more Flemish than Florida, its candy-cane poles supporting the simple portico, and its gigantic neon sign featuring a chicken and a chick that has a proto “Partridge Family” vibe, Maryland Fried Chicken has long been a cinematic stop along the strip-mall sameness of Colonial Drive — the old Highway 50 — in Winter Garden, Florida, just outside Orlando.
The fried-chicken fans who flock here no doubt take comfort in the architecture, but they are really here for the comfort food from one of the last outposts of a chain that could have been a contender and almost was a contender but has still managed to survive in pockets of the Southeast — and, in a small city in Michigan.
So to me, that makes Maryland Fried Chicken a plucky survivor.
On April 1, we will have one less Maryland Fried Chicken, and sadly it will be the whimsical one here, in Winter Garden.
WFTV reports the owners are hoping that the fried-chicken faithful will stop by one more time to share their memories of the Winter Garden store, which opened in 1966.
“For many of you, this was a place you grew up frequenting, and we are thankful that you have since brought your own families,” co-owner Sarah Sleeth said in a Facebook post. “We all mourn the loss of our favorite restaurants as they provide us with so much more than food. They provide nourishment to the soul.”
That they do, and that really is what it’s all about.
Comments like this on Facebook back up those soulful sentiments:
To this day, my parents make fun of how I exclaimed as we were driving past it: “I want to go to Mary-Land!”
And this one:
I was told this was the only fried chicken my grandmother Grimes would eat. When she passed she was the oldest living native in WG 🧡
And on and on they go.
WFTV reports that kitchen equipment and restaurant furniture will soon be up for sale, as well as commemorative T-shirts that will support employees who will soon be out of a job.
The owners told Fox 35 they bought the restaurant in 2020 with hopes of making a go of it, but the pandemic, and then inflation, had other plans.
“We had to close because as a small business owner, we don't see the perks that a large buyer like a large chain might see," Sleeth told Fox 35.
In 2021, a year into the pandemic, it appears Sleeth was already looking at a different use for the site, with plans for demolition approved that August for a new business on the site. That’s when a change.org petition seeking to save this location began to make the rounds. Check it out here.
The restaurant opened in July 1966 and replaced a general store that had stood there since the 1940s, the Orlando Evening Star reported at the time of the store’s opening.
The original operators were Douglas and Mary Bartholow — they were once in the fallout-shelter business, and Doug reportedly was a Life magazine cover model in 1961, sporting a fallout suit — and James LaCoste, a former electrical engineer at the Martin Company (more about that later). The Bartholows were Michigan transplants who had already opened an MFC in Pine Hills, Florida, two years earlier, and were the first franchisees of the chain in Florida. LaCoste was set to open another MFC at the time of the article’s publication.
What’s remarkable is how little this location has changed in 57 years. Behold the published photo from just before opening day, below. A year later, when the facade had twin Pepsi privilege signs, the Orlando Sentinel, reflecting the paleolithic views of gender roles in 1967, described MFC’s primary utility as being “a boon to the ladies on hot, sultry days.”
As I’ve told you in my earlier reports on Maryland Fried Chicken, the chain never quite rivaled the empire built by Col. Harland Sanders, but in its 1970s heyday, MFC was a worthy competitor to KFC.
Maryland Fried Chicken was founded in the Orlando area by Albert Constantine, an expatriate from Delaware who opened a restaurant down here in 1958, the Orlando Sentinel reported at the time of his death in 2009.
In 1962, he opened his first Maryland Fried Chicken, in Fern Park, figuring the restaurant’s name would appeal to nearby Lockheed-Martin (then the Martin Company) workers who had relocated to the Sunshine State from Maryland.
Mr. C, as Constantine was known, was inspired by Sanders’ success, impressed by the long lines out the door at a KFC near him.
But if the name, with its echo of home and the competing Kentucky Fried Chicken, drew crowds in, then the chicken’s quality made them repeat customers, and Constantine’s “broasting” method hit the spot, pressure-cooked chicken coated in a herb-and-spice blend that was light on grease and heavy on flavor.
The colonel had his secret recipe, and so now did Mr. C.
Constantine grew rich and cashed out in 1975 (or 1971 depending on the source), when the chain numbered over 250. But like a lot of these regional chains, its growth soon went into reverse. (The story, I suppose, might have been different had Mr. C stuck around … he tried to launch another chain, called Mr. C’s Southern Fried Chicken, with the inaugural restaurant opening in Sanford, Florida, in 1979. An ad from the time says he retained the rights to his recipe. It’s unclear if any more Mr. C’s opened.)
Instead of expanding dramatically like, say, Popeye’s, MFC retrenched into communities, mainly in the Southeast, with the most in Florida, its birthplace. (Broken chains have a way of retrenching to their home turf, sort of like returning home to die.)
There are only 29 MFCs in business, from my rough reckoning, and I have a full list and more photos in a separate post created for my patrons.
When I visited the location in Winter Garden, Florida in December 2020, I spent more time than I care to admit parked next door, patiently waiting for a gentleman in a huge red truck to finish his lunch — my goodness, he took his sweet time — so that I could get my shot.
I called this place “a fun and quirky footnote in the 20th-century story of America.”
It will be until April 1, anyway.
Want to learn where there are more locations, and see more photos of them? I am offering a guide to MFCs for my patrons. Please consider upgrading to paid and see the special post here!
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