Kansas burger stand is turning 100, and we’ll smell the party all the way to Wichita
Wichitans are still a little salty that White Castle — the famous slider chain founded here in 1916 — packed up and left town in the 1930s when it relocated its headquarters out of state then closed its last local burger stand, never to return.
But all these years, just 90 miles from Wichita, a locally-owned White Castle contemporary has operated continually since 1922 and might be the most famous — and most stubbornly aromatic — eatery in all of Kansas.
This weekend, Salina’s The Cozy Inn will celebrate its 100th birthday with an all-day party that the owner expects could draw as many as 3,000 people. The restaurant will serve its famous sliders from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. and will be selling special birthday T-shirts and giving away a grand prize of six months of free “Cozies,” as the burgers are commonly called.
Today, The Cozy Inn, which is at 108 N. Seventh St., is as much a tourist attraction as it is a restaurant. It’s been featured over the years on countless national travel shows and in numerous publications. Burger fans come from all over the world to try it, as is evidenced by the pin map hanging in the dining room that gets so full, it has to be replaced twice a year. Owner Steve Howard estimates that 90% of The Cozy Inn’s customers are out-of-towners.
The $1.39 sliders are so famous that Howard ships 10,000 of them a year all over the country even though he doesn’t advertise shipping as a service. They’re so sought after that he goes through 300 pounds of onions and 800 pounds of beef every week during his busy season, and on average he serves 1,300 sliders every day he’s open. And that’s even though the only other items on his menu are bagged chips and canned soda. The Cozy Inn doesn’t even serve fries.
No, The Cozy Inn is not White Castle, Howard admits. But many might argue it’s better.
“We ran them off,” he says with an almost straight face. “And all the White Castle people tell me that Cozies are like White Castles on steroids.”
Best stinkin’ restaurant
Howard, who’s owned The Cozy Inn since 2007, still insists on serving its signature item — a tiny burger topped with grilled onions, pickle, ketchup and mustard — exactly how it has been served since the original owner opened the 192-square-foot, six-stool burger stand in 1922.
Little balls of fresh ground beef are squished flat on a decades-old grill and sprinkled with diced onions that cook until caramelized. On the same grill, the burgers’ tiny buns are steamed to a perfect softness.
The onions are not optional because they give the lean beef its juiciness, Howard said, and customers who ask the restaurant to hold the onions are refused. They can choose whether to add pickle, mustard and ketchup, but they cannot have cheese, a “a six letter word we don’t use around here,” Howard says.
“It’s tradition,” he said. “We’ve been doing it this way for 100 years. You can’t change it or it wouldn’t be a Cozy.”
The onions also are famous for producing an unmistakable aroma as they cook, one that will permeate the hair and clothing of anyone who steps foot inside the restaurant for even a minute. That aroma is so strong that some businesses in downtown Salina ask people not to bring Cozy Inn food inside. It’s so strong that people have been known to prank their friends by hiding empty Cozy Inn bags somewhere in an office or bedroom.
It’s so strong that many customers opt to use the restaurant’s outside walk-up window rather than venture inside.
“As soon as you come in the building, you get ‘tagged,’ and people will know you’ve been here the rest of the day,” Howard said.
Cozy Inn customers have a love/hate relationship with the aroma, and several years ago, Howard placed an order for unscented air fresheners stamped with The Cozy Inn logo, and he hangs them on strings from a bar situated over the grill. It doesn’t take long for the strings and paper to yellow from the grease they’re absorbing, and people pay $3.99 to take them home. Some say they want a souvenir of the smell. Others just want to torture friends and acquaintances.
If the fresheners start to lose their pungency, Howard says, people can bring them back to get them “recharged” for free.
“The yellower they are, the stronger they smell,” he said.
The signature Cozy Inn smell is something that always transports 75-year-old Carol Ann Bachofer right back to her childhood. Bachofer, who now lives and farms in the Brookville area, grew up near Kipp, she said. On Sundays, her parents would frequently take the family to The Cozy Inn for an after-church meal before they went to visit her aunt.
When they’d step into her aunt’s front door after, she said, her aunt could instantly sniff out whether they’d been to “The Cozy.”
Bachofer stopped in to The Cozy Inn earlier this week and ordered three Cozy burgers for lunch then stayed for a bit of reminiscing.
“It was the most reasonable place to eat, and it was open on Sunday,” Bachofer said. “We came down and sat on the stools, and I had Grapette pop in a bottle, every single time.”
‘Salina’s Taste Sensation Destination’
The man credited with founding The Cozy Inn was Bob Kinkel, who was inspired by White Castle to open a restaurant selling sliders for a nickel apiece. His tiny restaurant had just six stools — the same six stools customers sit on today — and it was open seven days a week, often drawing people after late movies let out and dance halls closed downtown.
Kinkel owned the restaurant through its first 38 years, during which time it survived the Great Depression because of its inexpensive food and earned a following amid soldiers stationed at Smoky Hill Army Air Field Base during World War II. Its popularity was cemented in the late 1940s when two of The Cozy Inn’s fry cooks — Bob Swift and Bob Cane — became major league baseball players. The two would resume their jobs at the restaurant during off seasons, and people would pack in to see them.
Kinkel died in 1960, leaving the restaurant to his widow, Katherine, who added pies to the limited menu. She and her second husband, Richard Pickering, were the keepers of The Cozy for decades, until Katherine died in 1997. Not long after, three Salina businessmen — Max Holthaus, Gregg Boyle and Monte Shadwick — stepped in to buy the restaurant and ensure it stayed open.
Holthaus, who also managed the local country club, had a congenial bartender working for him who he thought had the temperament to shepherd The Cozy Inn through its next phase of life. It took awhile, but in 2007, he finally persuaded Howard — who was also working for the Salina school district — to take over The Cozy Inn.
When he bought the restaurant, Howard said, it was a pure business decision. He’d grown up in a small town near Salina but wasn’t fully aware of the restaurant’s fame.
“I don’t have the stories like a lot of people do,” he said. “My grandparents didn’t bring me here. My mom and dad didn’t bring me here. I’d only been here maybe once.”
But Howard learned that he was overseeing a piece of Kansas history when he began getting interview requests from outlets like The Travel Channel, which featured the restaurant twice in 2009, and from USA Today, which in 2010 named The Cozy Inn the “Best Burger Joint in Kansas.”
Through the years, Howard has learned to enjoy the attention the restaurant gets, and he’s become the king of inventing slogans for the place. “Buy ‘em by the sack” has been a saying since the beginning, but Howard has added descriptions like “The best stinking restaurant in the U.S.A” and “Salina’s Taste Sensation Destination.”
He also likes to tell people that Cozies are the “Hershey’s Kisses of burgers: You can get a bigger bite of burger, but you can’t get a bigger taste.”
Surviving for 100 years wasn’t necessarily an easy feat for The Cozy Inn and its many stewards, Howard said.
Back in the 1980s, the city of Salina launched an effort to spruce up its downtown, and included in its plans was tearing down several old buildings, including The Cozy Inn. When word got out, customers started a “Save the Cozy” petition and gathered 7,000 signatures in 60 days. The city eventually decided to buy the property and sell it to the Pickerings.
COVID-19 really didn’t hurt the restaurant, Howard said. In fact, because of its outside pickup window, The Cozy Inn was a popular choice for Salina residents feeling trapped at home. Though he closed the restaurant to indoor business for a period, Howard said, he sold 32,000 more sliders in 2020 than he did in 2019.
Not long ago, he hit a rough patch when the bakery that had long supplied his buns went under, and the temporary substitute he found displeased customers, who were vocal about their feelings. But recently, through provider US Foods, he’s managed to find a bun that long timers say tastes almost like the original.
Legacy protected
Howard says he’s not sure how much longer he’ll want to keep running The Cozy Inn, but its next chapter is secure. His 24-year-old daughter, Andrea Windholz, has worked alongside her father since she was 11, and she plans to take it over when he retires.
Andrea said she loves the restaurant and has even learned to accept that it’s her fate to always smell like grilled onions.
“I like the atmosphere,” she said. “I like talking to new people and meeting new people and seeing where everyone comes from.”
Howard says he always worked in the restaurant business, starting off as a dishwasher and even getting partway through McDonald’s management training program when he was younger.
He’s grown into the role of Cozy Inn caretaker over the past 15 years, he said, and he’s happy to have helped the iconic restaurant reach the century mark.
“What it needed was to have the right person running it,” he said. “I don’t want to brag on myself, but this is where I belong.”
This story was originally published March 10, 2022 at 5:21 AM.
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