George Webb, Milwaukee’s Hamburger King

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Long before McDonald’s and other fast-food franchises appeared on the landscape, a local lunchroom operator became Milwaukee’s undisputed “Hamburger King” by selling them 7 for $1. George Webb was an energetic businessman and a natural born publicity man who created a hamburger and breakfast restaurant that has been a Milwaukee institution for 85 years. 

Ryan Stamm, vice president of the Waukesha-based George Webb Corporation, said there are several reasons the restaurants have continued to survive the changing times. “My grandfather, father and uncle worked for this company all their lives. They were among the original franchise owners,” he said. “I started as a dishwasher at the 122nd and North location and worked my way up the ladder. This business is in our blood”. 

Stamm noted that many fast-food restaurants, eager to dominate the breakfast meal market, have been stiff competition for decades with no sign of slowing down. “People are in more of a hurry now, and don’t always have time to enjoy a more leisurely meal,” he said. “We don’t have drive-throughs with meals designed to eat in a car. Webb’s restaurants offer breakfast and other menu items all day long in a friendly, service-based atmosphere using the original recipes created by the Webb family”.

George Webb was born in 1901 and worked on his family’s upstate farm until he finished 8th grade. At age 15, he ran away from home and joined the Army where he drove an ammunition wagon in Europe. In 1918 he returned home and fell in love with a beautician named Evelyn Rieck. They ran off to Milwaukee, got married, and lived in a small apartment at 19th and Highland. Evelyn taught George to cut hair and he found a job at Reinhardt’s barber shop at 46th and Lisbon. The young couple struggled to make ends meet and moved to several different apartments in Bay View to avoid angry landlords.

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In 1927 Webb bought a tiny restaurant at 27th and Clybourn for a $300 promissory note. The L-shaped counter held 13 stools and initially he served hamburgers, eggs, toast, and coffee. Evelyn began making chili, chicken noodle, bean and split pea soups with her own recipes and business increased dramatically. Webb sold the diner for $6,000 and opened a bakery that supplied pies to local restaurants. The stock market crashed soon afterwards and within a year, Webb was flat broke. He worked in a tavern at 27th and Center where he was allowed to sell hamburgers and soup. Eventually he opened a restaurant across the street and sold thousands of hamburgers for six cents each. Soon he was operating similar restaurants on Fond Du Lac Avenue, Wells Street, Wisconsin Avenue and nine other sites. 

Two Clocks on the Wall

Webb sold those restaurants to his managers and used the money to open the first George Webb Hamburger Parlor at Ogden and Van Buren. This new, larger restaurant was painted red and white, and featured a picture of a hamburger and the slogan, “Buy 1, Buy 7, Buy 7 Million” on the sign. When a city ordinance prohibited establishments from being open 24 hours a day, Webb said his restaurants were open 23 hours and 59 minutes a day.  He hung two clocks—set one minute apart—in the lunchrooms to prove they were closed for one minute and reopened to be compliant with the law. To this day each George Webb restaurant still has two clocks on the wall.

When the major league Boston Braves came to Milwaukee in 1953, Webb had himself paged two or three times during the games. He relished the free advertising when crowds heard his name over the stadium loudspeakers. Webb also said he’d give away 10,000 free hamburgers if the team won 12 games in a row. In 1956, the Braves won 11 and Webb was on pins and needles, listening to the twelfth game on the radio. As it turned out, the Braves lost that one to Philadelphia, 4-2. “I would have gladly given them away,” he said at the time to a Milwaukee Journal reporter. “The offer still stands. We’ll just start over again, and this time with 12,000 hamburgers.” When George Webb died at age 56 six months later, there were 16 successful hamburger parlors in the chain ready to deliver the hamburgers when the time came. 

Thirty years later, Webb’s prediction came true when the Milwaukee Brewers won a dramatic Easter Sunday game against the Texas Rangers, their twelfth straight victory. The city buzzed with excitement because the Webb restaurants were going to deliver on their long-standing promise to give away free hamburgers. Three days after the Brewers’ record-smashing game, the restaurants served nearly 200,000 hamburgers within an 8-hour period.  Although the day was cold and rainy, fans waited good-naturedly for up to two hours to be a part of history.

Today there are 28 George Webb restaurants in southeastern Wisconsin, and while the hamburger is still a popular staple on the menu, it now sells for $2.45. “We’ve closed several of the restaurants because the locations were too close to one another,” Stamm said. “But we’ve got a franchise in Peshtigo now and we’re looking at other opportunities in the state. George Webb is here to stay”.