Along one outside wall of a $535,000 fieldstone-and-redwood building in Phoenix, Ariz., the Navajo Sun God gazes impassively from a glittering 67-by-9-ft. ceramic-tile mosaic depicting the sun's dawn-to-dusk procession through the skies. Around it for the past month has flowed a dawn-to-dusk parade of people and automobiles, drawn by another compelling image: the 12-ft.-high statue of a bright-eyed, chubby child with a brown cowlick, and "Big Boy" emblazoned across his chest.
This is "Bob's, Home of the Big Boy," one of the newest and fanciest hamburger stands in the U.S., decorated by Artist Millard Sheets and owned by the big boy of U.S. hamburgers, Robert C. Wian, 41. Last week, with art and hamburgers drawing record crowds in Phoenix, Wian announced plans for two new drive-ins (total value: $400,000) in California's hamburger-hungry San Fernando Valley, embarked on a $275,000 expansion program at two other Big Boy outlets in Southern California. By year's end Wian will have 13 drive-ins, all of them built around a lucky accident.
Offhanded Carve. In 1936 Fry-Cook Bob Wian, then three years out of high school, was operating a ten-stool clapboard lunch stand in Glendale, Calif. When a hamburger-jaded customer demanded "something different," Wian offhandedly carved a sesame-seed bun into three horizontal slices, slapped two beef patties between them, topped with cheese, relish and lettuce. When Wian advertised his Big Boy hamburger on his stand's menu, sales started sizzling like the brush fires that sear Glendale's foothills each summer.
From two restaurants in 1940 he has built up a chain of beige stucco drive-ins worth $4,000,000, last year sold 5 million 45¢ Big Boys, on which "Boyfriends" slathered 38,000 gallons of mayonnaise, 500,000 bottles of ketchup and 25,000 gallons of relish. In addition, some 20 million Big Boys were sold in 1954 by franchised chains and restaurants in nine states and the District of Columbia.
Wian, who believes "hamburgers and people [are] the success of this business," takes no chances with either. He buys only fresh, top-grade chuck or round steak (which is always fried in its own juice), picks and trains his employees with equal care. Says Wian: "There are no ready dates on my lots."
Fry Cook at Heart. Greying, trimly mustached Wian, who manages to look conservative in Hollywood-style drape suits, insists he is "still a fry cook at heart." In 1948 he became California's second-youngest mayor in a hotly contested Glendale recall election, but resigned after eleven months when his fellow officials proved cool to Big Boyish ideas on city government, e.g., in a budget-trimming session, he proposed eliminating city library funds for magazine subscriptions, declared: "They want to read a magazine, let 'em go down to the drugstore." A churchgoing Methodist with a taste for gambling and sport cars, Wian expects his Phoenix stand to be grossing $1,000,000 a year by next July. His fond hope is to "retire" soon to operate a single family-style restaurant where he can serve cocktails (his hamburger chain sells no liquor) and $1.40 steaks to "the average American."