Juan’s Mexican Bar and Grill in Chesterfield has become a new Sunday tradition for my brother and me over the past few months. I always wondered what the storefront was when originally built, and my question was answered when I happened to look at the door handle as I tried to remember whether to push or pull. It was a Ben Franklin! I’ll be dipped.
The story of the Ben Franklin variety store starts with Edward B. Butler. Born in Maine in 1853, Butler found a job at a wholesale dry goods store at sixteen. Eventually promoted to traveling salesman, he went out on his own in 1877 by establishing Butler Brothers, a mail order company, with his siblings Charles and George1.
In 1878, Butler inaugurated the “five center” counter plan by selecting inexpensive goods he sold for a nickel2. The innovation led Butler Brothers’s catalog business to become prosperous. By the turn of the twentieth century, the company counted more than a hundred thousand people as customers!
Unfortunately, the growth of variety stores that sold a wide range of inexpensive household items and general merchandise began to cut into the company’s business3. In 1927, the company founded a chain of franchised five-and-dimes to carry its merchandise and claw back market share4. Hoping to monetize the maxim “a penny saved is a penny earned,” Butler named its new stores Ben Franklin5.
A typical Ben Franklin store sold craft supplies, household goods, personal care products, toys, seasonal items, basic apparel, and home decor at inexpensive prices. If you never ventured inside one, here’s a fantastic recollection. At one point, more than 2,500 Ben Franklins operated across the country6! Sam Walton of Walmart fame got his retail start with one he took over in 19457. So did Michael Dupey, who converted a Ben Franklin in Texas into the first Michael’s crafts store in 19738.
Along with the Pic ’N Pay supermarket, Chesterfield’s Ben Franklin opened in 1968 as the anchors of the brand-new Chesterfield Shopping Center9. Some of the first products and services the store advertised were dollar rentals of the Blue Lustre electric carpet shampooer, twenty-one new styles of sunglasses for fifty-seven cents each, and thermal weave blankets for $3.9910.
Ben Franklin pulled out the stops in 1971 when its summer days coupon sale advertised 32 ounce bottles of Pepsi and jumbo rolls of paper towels for 23 cents, 30-quart coolers for 77 cents, and 20-gallon trash cans for only $1.99! By then, Ben Franklin’s former Indianapolis zone manager Donald E. Brown owned the establishment11. The store continued to operate under his stewardship until 1987.
1987 may be the year it closed. I haven’t found a specific date Chesterfield’s Ben Franklin shut down, but the building was home to a flea market in 199412. It became Chesterfield Auction Center in 2003, then Family Man Auction in 2008. I best remember the building as El Rancho Poblano until Juan’s took over this past year and revamped the menu.
As a whole, the Ben Franklin chain didn’t last much longer than the Chesterfield outpost. By 1996, its stores had decreased from its all-time high of 2,500 in forty-nine states to a relatively paltry 93013. Separated from Butler Brothers since 195914, the company declared bankruptcy in 1996 after competition from Walmart and other big box stores proved too tough to surmount15.
Thankfully, the company’s bankruptcy had little impact on most remaining Ben Franklin franchises, many of which simply chose a different wholesaler16. One was a company called Promotions Unlimited, which acquired the Ben Franklin name in 199717. Unfortunately, the new company declared bankruptcy itself in 2017. Nevertheless, a handful of Ben Franklin Stores continue to operate, including Ben Franklin Crafts in Mitchell, Indiana.
I obviously knew of Ben Franklin the statesman when I ventured into Juan’s for enchiladas a few weeks ago. I’d even heard of the chain of stores that took his name! I’d never seen one, though, and all it took to dive down the Ben Franklin rabbit hole was finding the name on the restaurant’s door handles. On my way out, I checked them again, just to be sure of what I’d seen.
Ben Franklin stores were known as a convenient one-stop shop for many customers. That’d be the kind of store Chesterfield needs if it wasn’t already home to a Dollar General! I’m glad its storefront in Chesterfield has been transformed into one of the best Mexican places I’ve been to. Next time you’re in town, enjoy some of the greatest salsa verde you’ve ever tried at Juan’s! Armed with the satisfaction of knowing what came before, mine seemed to taste even better the last time I visited.
Sources Cited
1 Wilson, M. (2004). Butler Bros. Encyclopedia of Chicago. Chicago Historical Society [Chicago]. Web. Retrieved May 19, 2024.
2 Chicago and Its Resources Twenty Years After 1871-1891 (1892). The Chicago Times Company [Chicago]. Book.
3 Huttner, S. (2017). Butler Brothers, Incorporated, New York & Chicago, 1877-1929. The Lucile Project [Iowa City]. Web. Retrieved May 19, 2024.
4 Ben Franklin Store Zone Manager Meet, Plan Merchandising (1961, March 2). The Arlington Heights Herald [Illinois]. P. 43.
5 Robinson, J. (2023, April 7). Michigan’s ‘Ben Franklin’ Stores: 1927-1970s.
6 (See footnote 5).
7 Gross, D. (1997, August). Greatest Business Stories of All Time. John Wiley & Sons [New York]. Book.
8 Halkias, M. (2010, May 4). Michael J. Dupey: Created craft superstore concept with Irving-based Michaels chain. Dallas Morning News. Web. Retrieved May 19, 2024.
9 Madison County Assessor’s Office (2024). Parcel Number 48-12-10-400-235.000-035. Madison County Government [Anderson]. Web. Retrieved May 19, 2024.
10 SPOTS before your eyes (1968, September 19). The Anderson Herald. p. 45.
11 Brown, Donald E. (1996, March 23). The Muncie Evening Press. p. 14.
12 Flea Market (1994, September 4). The Muncie Star. p. 48.
13 Leith, S. (1996, August 1). Ben Franklin corporate bankruptcy shouldn’t affect Northeast Iowa stores. The Waterloo Courier. p. 21.
14 (See footnote 3).
15 Iyengar, Son (1996, July 30). Ben Franklin declares bankruptcy. The Burlington Free Press [Vermont]. p. 1.
16 (See footnote 13).
17 Schuyler, D. (2006, July 14). Racine’s Promotions Unlimited rekindles Ben Franklin chain. The Milwaukee Business Journal. Web. Retrieved May 19, 2024.
Here’s my memory of the Ben Franklin that was more or less in my neighborhood as a kid.
https://blog.jimgrey.net/2020/06/26/brants-and-south-bends-miami-village/
I was hoping you’d comment! I’ve read that post a couple times and love it.
Im from Arkansas so I remember Ben Franklin stores well . Sam Walton bought his first Ben Franklin in Newport Arkansas. There is still a Walton’s 5 & 10 store downtown in Bentonville Arkansas . It’s like a museum and store together cool place to visit .
Very good info. Thanks for sharing!
I remember Ben Franklin – I think I remember one in Georgetown in Fort Wayne. But I could be confusing it with another chain of the same kind. It seems like that segment got bigger (K-Mart then Wal Mart) and smaller (Dollar General) and everything in the middle died off.
Coming to this from today’s post, so that’s why I’m replying on a year-old piece!
Growing up in Connecticut, I don’t recall seeing any Ben Franklins. The next town over had a Woolworth that I dutifully shopped at, and I have vague recollections of shopping at the Kresge in Connecticut Post Mall before Kmart finally pulled the plug on the brand. There was also a McCrory I went to once or twice. When I moved here to Portland, there was a lone Newberrys at Lloyd Center that I shopped once before that chain gave up the ghost. (Appropriately enough, that location is now a Dollar Tree, the spiritual successor of all the dead five-and-dimes.)
I think I’ve only seen two Ben Franklin’s in the wild: one in Shallotte NC when I briefly lived there in the early 90s, and one in Bowling Green OH in the early aughts. By then that Ben Franklin was mostly a craft shop. Ben Franklin’s weak brand identity (compared to Woolworth or SS Kresge) was both a blessing and a curse–not as well known, but then the stores could seamlessly morph into something else when the parent corporation went bankrupt.
Very cool. Woolworth’s and Kresge were before my time, but I think there’s still a BF craft shop in Indiana unless it recently closed.