Wichita man earns free burgers for life from a local diner — on one (permanent) condition
About a year and a half ago, Kristin Hale started making an offer to her regular customers at Ty’s Diner, the 66-year-old greasy burger restaurant at 928 W. Second St. that she and her husband bought in 2012.
Get a Ty’s Diner logo tattooed on your person, she’d tell them, and we’ll give you free burgers for life.
No one was interested.
“We kept asking our regulars, but they’d say ‘no no no’ and shut us down,’” she said with a laugh.
Then, recently, she tried again, making the offer to Ty’s regular Mark Klamm. A 58-year-old process engineer group leader at Textron, Klamm has been eating at Ty’s two or three days a week for the last 20 years. He prefers the chili, but since it’s served only October through February, he also eats the restaurant’s famous burgers — no tomato, no mustard, side of fries and a side of barbecue sauce.
Klamm, who jokes that he may be going through a mid-life crisis, was telling Hale about his plan to get a Metallica tattoo at Time Honored Tattoo, the shop that operates next door to Ty’s. Hale talked to tattoo artist Sloan Smith, who made a prototype of a Ty’s tattoo.
What did Klamm think?
“They teased me about it, and at one point, she said I was in the No. 7 slot for best customer,” Klamm said with a laugh. “I said, ‘What do I gotta do to be No. 1?’ And they said, ‘Get a tattoo.’”
On Thursday afternoon, Klamm left Time Honored Tattoo with the Ty’s logo inside a cheeseburger permanently inked on his left forearm. And on Friday, he was in the corner booth at Ty’s, devouring his second free burger. (The owners fronted him the first one on Thursday, just before his appointment with Smith.)
Hale took time out from the lunch rush to visit Klamm’s table and admire his new tattoo. She was impressed with the detail, she said, especially the red onions.
Hale said she’s happy to make good on the offer, and Klamm is now entitled to a free burger any time he visits the restaurant from now on.
Other customers shouldn’t get any ideas, though. Klamm is the one and only winner.
“We’re one and done. We’re not Domino’s,” Hale said, referring to the incident in Russia last year where the pizza chain offered free pizza for life to customers who got tattoos of the chain’s logo. The contest was supposed to run for two months, but so many people did it, the offer was revoked after four days.
The Ty’s tattoo is Klamm’s third in a month, including that Metallica tattoo. He’s planning at least two more.
“I waited 58 years before I got my first tattoo,” he said. “I’ve just gone crazy.”
Klamm says he has no regrets about the tattoo because he loves Ty’s — and he especially loves the people who run it.
“You go in there, and I don’t know how she does it, but Kristin remembers almost all of her customers’ orders,” he said. “I love the way she takes care of her customers.”
This story was originally published March 29, 2019 at 4:17 PM with the headline "Wichita man earns free burgers for life from a local diner — on one (permanent) condition."