03/21/2026
Interesting . . .
In 1962, a struggling McDonald's franchise owner in Cincinnati walked into Ray Kroc's office with an idea for a fish sandwich, and Kroc told him: "You're always coming up here with a bunch of crap. I don't want my stores stunk up with the smell of fish."
That franchise owner was Lou Groen, the neighborhood around his restaurant at 5425 West North Bend Road in Cincinnati was 87 percent Catholic, and on Fridays during Lent his daily sales had dropped to 75 dollars. He had a wife, twins at home, and a McDonald's that was bleeding money one meatless Friday at a time. He had watched the Frisch's Big Boy across the street doing full business every Friday because they served a fish sandwich, and he had gone to Chicago to tell Ray Kroc that McDonald's needed one too. Kroc was not interested.
The reason Kroc was not interested turned out to be that he was already working on his own meatless Friday sandwich. It was called the Hula Burger and it was a slice of grilled pineapple with a piece of cheese on a bun. Kroc believed in it enough to propose a competition. On Good Friday 1962 both sandwiches would be sold at select locations and whichever one sold more units would earn a permanent place on the McDonald's menu. Groen's granddaughter Erica Shadoin, who still owns and operates that same Cincinnati franchise today, later recalled what her grandfather said the moment he heard Kroc's idea: he knew immediately that his fish sandwich was going to win. The final score on Good Friday 1962 was Filet-O-Fish 350, Hula Burger 6. Kroc bought Groen a new suit as his prize.
What Groen had understood and Kroc had missed was something almost embarrassingly simple. The Catholic population of Cincinnati was not avoiding meat on Fridays because they wanted pineapple. They were avoiding meat because their faith required it, and what they wanted in its place was something that actually tasted like a meal. A breaded halibut fillet with tartar sauce on a steamed bun tasted like a meal. A grilled pineapple ring with cheese on a hamburger bun tasted like someone had run out of ideas on a Thursday night. Groen had spent months perfecting his recipe before he ever went to Chicago. He had even noticed one of his employees putting a slice of cheese on a fish sandwich he was making for himself one afternoon and decided it was a good enough idea to steal. That half slice of cheese has been on every Filet-O-Fish ever since.
By 1963 the sandwich was rolling out across the entire McDonald's system. By 1965 it became the first new item ever added to the permanent McDonald's national menu since Kroc had taken over the chain. Ray Kroc acknowledged the Hula Burger's failure in his autobiography Grinding it Out, writing: "It was a giant flop when we tried it in our stores. One customer said, I like the hula, but where's the burger?"
Today McDonald's sells 300 million Filet-O-Fish sandwiches every year. Twenty-three percent of those are sold during Lent. Lou Groen retired in 1985 owning 43 McDonald's franchises. He passed away in 2011. His granddaughter Erica still runs the restaurant at 5425 West North Bend Road in Cincinnati where the whole thing started, the 66th McDonald's franchise ever opened, the place where a desperate man with 75 dollars in daily Friday sales invented one of the most enduring items in the history of fast food because a pineapple slice on a bun was never going to be the answer.
eatshistory.com
- Donnie
