HEBER CITY — It's been a mainstay for weekend visitors to the Heber Valley for over two decades, serving U.S. senators, world travelers and locals alike. But boaters and anglers hoping to grab one of Granny's famously thick shakes this Memorial Day weekend are in for a sad surprise: The drive-in is closed for good.
"A lot of people hate to see that it's gone, just because it's been here for so long, and it has such a history in the area," said Jennifer Kohler, Heber City Chamber of Commerce executive director. "It's really a well-known place, not just here, but all over the Western area."
Allen and Jan Eggleston opened the restaurant in 1982 and operated it for 16 years before selling it to David Covington in 1998. Covington ran into some personal financial trouble and turned Granny's back over to the Egglestons, who then leased the drive-in to Sean Myers. Myers closed Granny's in December 2004.
Myers could not be reached for comment on why he closed the restaurant, and Heber residents seem to have been kept in the dark as well.
"I don't know for sure what happened," Kohler said. "It really has been very private. Where it closed in the middle of the winter, I don't think a lot of people have even thought about it yet."
Eggleston said Myers had told him business wasn't going too well, but thought it could be a ploy to get him to reduce the payments Myers was making to him on the building lease.
Kohler said that although she couldn't cite any specific numbers, she thought the restaurant hadn't been as popular recently as in the past.
"I don't think as many people went there as what you would think, just because it was so up and down," she said. "You always had your loyal people that had been there every single year, but I don't know what their sales numbers looked like."
But that hasn't always been the case. In Granny's heyday, lines for the 24-seat establishment would often snake halfway down the block.
"The holidays were just killers; I mean, we were really busy," Eggleston said. "One Memorial Day weekend we did 1,900 shakes, all hand-mixed, one at a time."
Eggleston said the drive-in was a favorite of several congressmen and senators, chief among them former Utah Sen. Jake Garn.
"One day Jake Garn, Senator Garn, got in line, and he was waiting, and some people came up to the door and looked in and said 'Oh, this is too long, we're not going to wait,' and he said to them, 'You should wait, it's worth it,'" Eggleston said. "He came in all the time; a lot of the senators and congressmen would come in. We had Mohammed Ali in twice, Jake Garn brought him both times."
Granny's fame spread beyond Utah state lines.
"We've had people from Japan, Australia, Italy, all over Europe that had mentioned that when other people traveled over there, that they had been to Granny's," Eggleston said. "We even had people's relatives come and visit them in Heber that were so impressed with our shakes: I remember one guy came in, got some, put the shakes in a box with dry ice and had them shipped to Kansas. I don't know how they came out, but he did it a couple of times."
Eggleston said he and his wife opened the drive-in almost by default.
"Real estate was so bad, nothing was selling," Eggleston said. "We just thought, what can we do in this building? And that's what we came up with."
Appropriately, they decided to call the restaurant, which had been Eggleston's grandmother's home for decades, Granny's. The couple had no real experience running a restaurant, though Jan had worked at a similar establishment in high school.
"We had owned several other businesses though, and had the business acumen and experience," Eggleston noted.
Eggleston said quality ingredients and good equipment were the only recipe he needed to create Granny's famous shakes.
"We didn't really have any recipes," he said. "We used certain types of equipment that was conducive to doing the good, thick shakes that stand up.
"We just used good product, the highest quality we could use, and hired good people, kept it clean."
This Memorial Day, disappointed shake-seekers will likely head down the road to long-time Granny's rival Dairy Keen, dubbed "the train" by locals.
"Obviously, as some of our summer events start coming on board, people will be thinking about ice cream and that type of thing," Kohler said. "But we do have other options. I know that they were really well known for their shakes and everything, but the Dairy Keen has actually received awards twice in a row for Best in State for their shakes. Even prior to the closing of Granny's, they were pretty stiff competition."
Eggleston said while he looks back on his family's experience at Granny's with fondness, he's content to let it remain part of his past.
"I can't say I'm sad because I think Granny's has just drifted away," he said. "It was a great business for us and I think a lot of people will miss it. But I will say I don't think it's been run in the same way we ran it ever since we sold it."
E-mail: mdecker@desnews.com