Shoney's Big Boy Museum (Charleston, WV)

The second museum we visited on our whirlwind West Virginia trip was the easily overlooked Shoney's Big Boy Museum, which can be found on the side of the road across from a Sally Beauty Supply store in Charleston, West Virginia. The museum is marked by a tall monument with a Big Boy on top.



But here's the rub... It's not much of a museum. The "museum" itself consists of windows at the base of the monument which showcase Shoney's memorabilia and old menus.



For all you Shoney's history buffs out there, here's information about the chain that's written on the plaque at the base of the monument: "Alex Schoenbaum became one of the nation's foremost restaurateurs by building a chain of Shoney's Big Boy restaurants that started on this site in 1947 and grew to 1900 restaurants within four decades. The original restaurant was the Parkette Drive-in. It opened to throngs of residents flocking to be served double-deck Big Boy hamburgers by smiling carhops in the windows of their big American 'Shoney-shine" cars. A visionary, Schoenbaum recognized the interest in new 'fast' food and the growth potential. In 1951, Schoenbaum enlisted Bob Wian, of Bob's Big Boy of California and David Frisch of Frisch's Big Boy of Ohio to incorporate the Big Boy name with concept and then divided the country into franchised territories. The name Shoney's was soon chosen by a  write-in contest; teh winner being awarded a new Cadillac."