Toddle House was actually founded by a fellow in Texas, but it didn't — and wouldn't have — become such a success if it weren't for a rather famous Memphian.
One of the largest restaurant chains in the country actually started by accident. In the late 1920s, a lumberman in Houston, Texas, by the name of J.C. Stedman found himself with leftover supplies. So he went around to little neighborhood groceries and laundries and arranged to construct nice little cottages for their branch offices.
One day, somebody asked Stedman why he didn't turn one of his buildings into a cozy diner, and that's how it all began.
But Stedman didn't stay in Houston. He came to Memphis and persuaded the owners of Britling Cafeteria, which had started up here a few years earlier, to build his restaurants in our city. So for a while, Britling owned Toddle House.
But not for long. Because then he met Fred Smith.
No, not the Fred Smith of FedEx fame. But his father, who had started the Dixie Greyhound Lines, part of the national Greyhound bus fleet. Smith met Stedman and said, "I want in." Or words to that effect. I wasn't invited to that meeting, you see. Well, Smith took over the entire operation, moving the company's headquarters to Memphis and making himself president of the Toddle House Corporation.
"Toddle" House? Why on earth would anyone give such an odd name to a diner? Well, the story goes that Stedman's little buildings were meant to be transportable, and some bratty kid — I believe it was one of the Lauderdale cousins — was watching one of them loaded onto a truck. It wobbled back and forth, and the kid said, "Look, Ma, how that little house toddles!" Stedman was standing nearby and realized he had a distinctive name for his restaurants.
All Toddle Houses were exactly the same — a tiny brick cottage, painted white with a blue roof. Inside, diners found no tables — just a row of 10 stools at a stainless-steel counter. Everything was gleaming steel or white tile, and crammed into the tiny space were fryers and ovens and broilers and toasters and — well, just about everything needed to prepare anything from a cup of coffee to a steak dinneToddle House was quite proud of its hamburger, even calling it "World Famous." Their scrambled eggs were mighty tasty, I recall, but Toddle House merely noted that they were "well-known." Not exactly the highest praise, was it? And as for their pecan waffle? Well, they were "so waffly good."
One thing missing from a Toddle House was a cash register. Instead, the business operated on the honor system. Standing by the front door was a steel and glass box called the "Auto Cashier" and customers simply paid their bill by dropping in their money as they left. And signs made it clear: "No Tipping Allowed."
The first Toddle House in Memphis opened at Cleveland and Union in the 1930s. It was actually called Stevens Sandwich Service because, in the beginning, the owners of the franchises kept their names on their signs. Other Toddle Houses quickly opened all over town — on Poplar and Union and Madison and Lamar.
By the 1950s, Toddle House had more than 200 locations in almost 90 cities. But then came changes. In 1961 Dobbs House, the Memphis company that had its own nationwide chain of diners and handled catering for most of this country's airlines, bought Toddle House. The purchase price of $18 million was, at the time, the largest transaction between Memphis businesses in our city's history.
It was too confusing to have Dobbs Houses and Toddle Houses, so all the Toddle Houses were shut down, or changed to Dobbs Houses, or converted to Steak & Egg Kitchens. Most of the cute little buildings were demolished, though rumor has it that at least one Toddle House found its way to the grounds of the Lauderdale Mansion, where — they say — it served for years as a ticket booth and souvenir stand.
But that's simply not true. People are confusing our mansion with Graceland. It happens all the time.
