I spent last night watching The Founder, a Netflix movie that chronicles Ray Kroc’s rise from struggling milkshake mixer salesman to McDonald’s magnate. It reminded me that the road to billions and billions sold is paved with also-rans, such as the original McDonald’s, which Dick and Mac renamed “The Big M” and closed six years after Kroc bought the company. In Indiana, we had Burger Chef. In East-Central Indiana and parts of Ohio, we had Burger Man.

Burger Man was founded in 1968 but it’s probably better known by the names of the restaurants it was sandwiched between it. The chain started as Mister Fifteen, and Mac’s Famous Hamburgers shared some of the company’s executives and acquired several of its restaurants after Burger Man shut down for good.

Larry Lattomus started Mister Fifteen in 1961. The company took its name as a reference to the cost of its hamburgers¹, which were loss-leaders intended to get hungry patrons in the door to order something more expensive². The chain began with two Muncie locations, one at the corner of South Madison and 21st Street and one on North Wheeling Avenue across from the new Northwest Plaza³.

A third restaurant soon opened at “the Crossroads of the City,” as the company called the corner of Jackson and Walnut streets in their marketing material. It didn’t last long, though, since by 1965, Mister Fifteen acquired land for its then-third location at West Kilgore and South Batavia avenues on Muncie’s west side⁴.

Architecturally, Mister Fifteen restaurants were typical of the futuristic Googie style prevalent in commercial building construction at the time. Small structures, most Mister Fifteens had a zig-zag roof that framed a tall A-frame sign at the center of the building. The store at Kilgore and Batavia was the first to feature a pair of larger-than-life statues of Mister Fifteen himself. One stood in front of the building, rotating atop a twenty-three foot tall pole⁵, while a second model allowed drive-in patrons to order through Mister Fifteen’s belt buckle. I think it’s creepy as I write this in 2023, but things were different in the 60s.

The Mister Fifteen statues were produced by Richard Kishel, a Ball State art professor and teacher at Burris Laboratory School, who operated a workshop, Art Forms, on West Adams Street in Muncie. After the statues became a hit, Kishel’s firm produced an ironic fifteen Mister Fifteens in 1966. Each was made with fiberglass reinforced by steel piping⁶.

In 1968, Mister Fifteen received national publicity when the company was featured in Drive-In Management magazine after they placed playgrounds next to their stores. The installments included picnic tables, swing sets, a “large climbing turtle,” and “stepping stones.” Lattomus told the magazine that the chain’s business had increased 30% after their introduction⁷. I’m sure that many of us are familiar with the concrete tortoises that Mister Fifteen installed; they were common in parks and playgrounds around Indiana and were also manufactured by Dick Kishel and Art Forms.

In many ways, Mister Fifteen’s playgrounds paved the way for McDonald’s McDonaldland playgrounds, which first appeared at a restaurant in Chula Vista, California, in 1972⁸. Beyond their introduction and the exposure it garnered, though, 1968 was a big year for Mister Fifteen. Not even a month after the company was featured in Drive-In Management, the chain changed its name to Burger Man as part of a reorganization that acknowledged the rising cost of the chain’s hamburgers and consolidated two operations companies and a real estate entity into one. At the time, Burger Man operated three restaurants in Muncie, one in Anderson, one in Lawrence, and one in Greenville, Ohio. A month after the name change, the company was purchased by Vesco Corporation, a holding company based in Westchester, Pennsylvania¹⁰. 

The reorganization saw the company aggressively franchise its concept, beginning with a store in Elwood on State Road 28, then two in Springfield, Ohio, on South Limestone Street¹¹ and East Home Road¹². In 1969, Larry Lattomus, still president of Burger Man, Incorporated as the Vesco subsidiary, announced that Wade von Kleeck had been promoted to Executive Vice President to oversee the chain’s expansion¹³. The following year, Lattomus resigned from the company and was replaced by F.U. Goebert. By 1971 Vesco Corporation had diversified to become a manufacturer of garage-door operators and real estate investment business, in addition to operating Burger Man¹⁴.

In 1971, another Burger Man opened in Sidney, Ohio. Later that year, Von Kleeck, Bill Kelly, and Doyne Crum formed a new company called Kelly’s, Incorporated. The trio opened a Kelly’s Family Restaurant four blocks north of Burger Man in Sidney and a second store only three blocks north of Muncie’s South Madison Street Burger Man. In 1972, Kelly’s merged with Mac’s Famous Hamburger Systems, Crum’s company, that operated eight restaurants in Indiana and Ohio from its Michigantown headquarters¹⁶.

In December of 1973 Burger Man found itself unable to pay its debts and in imminent danger of insolvency. As a result, the Vesco closed its restaurants down for good and announced that some of its buildings would be marketed towards other restaurants looking to operate under different brands¹⁷. One of those businesses was Mac’s: in 1974, Von Kleeck and Kelly purchased the Burger Man at Kilgore and Batavia, which opened as Mac’s Famous Hamburgers after a substantial renovation added a drive-through window and interior seating for eighty people¹⁸.

The Burger Man on North Wheeling Avenue in Muncie was demolished to make way for a new Long John Silver’s in 1975¹⁹. By the following year, the store on 53rd Street in Anderson had become another Mac’s restaurant. Muncie’s Madison Street Burger Man was demolished around 1979 so a new Pizza Hut could be built. Burger Man’s second Anderson location, at 3rd Street and Scatterfield Road, was torn down to erect a car dealership on its foundation in 1992²⁰.

The Greenville, Ohio store appears to have been demolished to make way for CVS, while the Burger Man in Sidney later became an Arby’s and is now Al’s Pizza. Although Mac’s ultimately expanded to twenty-one fast food restaurants and steakhouses²¹, it eventually joined Burger Man on its path towards the way of the dodo: as of 2023, only one restaurant remains, on McGalliard Road in Muncie.

That means there are as many Mac’s left as there are Burger Man statues. Of the sixteen that Mister Fifteen ordered from Art Forms, only one remains that I’m aware of: it’s on Railroad Street in Shirley, Indiana, a town bisected by the Hancock/Henry county line. I’m not sure which Burger Man restaurant it came from, but the statue seems to have moved here to advertise Judy’s Dairy Dip, an ice cream stand where Shirley’s Liquor Depot now sits. The statue originally featured red-striped pants, a red vest and tie, and a white hat but was given its present color scheme during a 2016 spiff-up²². 

The Burger Man statue from the 3rd Street and Scatterfield location in Anderson wound up on a farm on South Madison Avenue near I-69 in the late 1980s. It was evidently scrapped after the property was sold²³.  Yet another one was found years ago at an antique mall in Pierceton²⁴.

It’s easy to see why the biggest burger restaurants continue to expand while places like Burger Man and Mac’s wind up contracting into nothing. It’s unfortunate nonetheless- although it’s been fifty years since fast-foodies in eastern Indiana and western Ohio have ordered Smokie Sandwiches, Famous Fishwiches, or a three-for-a-dollar tenderloin special, Shirley’s lonely Burger Man still serves as a reminder of a time before national quick service restaurant companies met in secret to decide that, moving forward, all of their buildings would be beige variations of the same boring box. In the 1960s and 70s, fast food was local, irrelevant, and even a little whimsical. Ask Burger Man! Just don’t yell into his belt buckle.

Sources Cited
1 Iliff, D. (1967, January 15). Franchising Gains Popularity in ’66. The Muncie Star. p. 31.
2 (See footnote 1).
3 “Attend the Grand Opening” (1957, March 13). The Muncie Evening Press. p. 14.
4 New Store Planned on Kilgore Avenue (1965, July 6). The Muncie Star. p. 12.
5 Frankensteins Come Big at This Man’s Workshop (1965, December 19). The Muncie Star. p. 37.
6 (See footnote 5).
7 Bigger, R. (1968, January 5). Mr. 15 Hits Headlines in Trade Paper. The Muncie Evening Press. p. 17.
8 Behr, F. (2021, March 24). This Was The World’s First McDonald’s PlayPlace. Mashed. Web. Retrieved March 18, 2023.
9 Bigger, R. (1968, November 8). Franchises for “Burger Man” To Be Issued. The Muncie Evening Press. p. 22.
10 Burger Man Stock Sold (1968, December 24). The Muncie Evening Press. p. 20.
11 Restaurant To Be Built On S. Limestone St. (1969, March 2). The Springfield News-Sun. p. 21
12 Burger Man, Inc. Purchases Land For Restaurant. (1969, April 13). The Springfield News-sun. p. 23.
13 Von Kleeck in New Post With Burger Man, Inc. (1969, March 21). The Muncie Evening Press. p. 26.
14 Vesco Corp. sales jump (1971, January 16). The Wilmington Morning News. p. 29.
15 New Eatery at Madison, 17th Is Open (1971, December 25). The Muncie Star. p. 16.
16 Bigger, R. (1972, October 25) Family Restaurant Changes Its Name, but Not Owners. The Muncie Evening Press. p. 31.
17 Burger Man Closing Muncie Restaurants (1973, December 11). The Muncie Star. p. 17.
18 Bigger, R. (1974, February 13). Homestead credit available on state gross income tax. The Muncie Evening Press. p. 21.
19 Stack, M. (1975, May 14). Plan on Eating Out: City Menu Adds Four. The Muncie Star. p. 8.
20 Madison County Office of Information & GIS Services. (2023). Parcel ID: 48-12-07-401-063.000-003.
21 Doyne U. Crum, 64, owned Mac’s restaurants (1993, June 19). The Lafayette Journal and Courier. p. 8.
22 Aubrie and Jerry (2016, February 6). Baker Man Statue. Roadside America. Web. Retrieved March 18, 2023.
23 Riley, J.B. If you grew up in Anderson, IN. (2019, May 26). The Burger man sign that was at 3rd and Scatterfield ended up out on South Madison ave back in the [Comment]. Facebook. Web. Retrieved March 30, 2023.
24 Shideler, T., & Koenker, J. (2023, March 24). Burger Man post conversation. personal.