Jiffy Drive-In
photo by Courtesy of the Weaver Family
A typical 1960’s family is in their station wagon, on their way to or from somewhere. As evening falls, hunger sets in. There are several choices, but who decides? The children in the back seat (the real decision-makers) see a restaurant with green and yellow neon at the roofline, and a large neon sign featuring a chef at the road. “Mr. Jiffy!” the kids proclaim. Jiffy Drive-Ins were once a familiar sight to travelers in the southeast and other areas. There were three in Chattanooga, and two of the buildings are still with us.
The first Jiffy Drive-In Restaurant in Chattanooga opened in 1963, with Paul L. Howe, a former Jiffy manager in Marietta, as franchisee. It was located at 1600 Dodds Avenue. The previous year, Jiffy founder Clarence D. Weaver had begun to offer franchises for the restaurant format he had developed in the Knoxville area in the 1950’s. Mr. Weaver had worked his way up in the Krystal organization, including positions as store manager and district supervisor. The name, “Jiffy,” was suggested by his sister-in-law, and the restaurant’s motto was “good food in a jiffy.”
The Jiffy sign outside the Dodds Avenue location noted their feature item, hamburgers at ten cents. This was later increased to the enormous sum of twelve cents. For that, one purchased a small hamburger patty cooked with onions, placed between two buns with pickle and mustard. A larger burger called the Jiant Burger was also on the menu. It was topped with a special sauce developed by Mr. Weaver. The Jiffy Drive-In was also open for breakfast, unlike some of their hamburger competitors.
Two other Jiffy’s opened in Chattanooga in 1965: one at 1303 East 23rd Street and the other in East Ridge at 3448 Ringgold Road. Richard L. Nicholson and C. Jack Smith were the respective proprietors. Changes in the Jiffy organization soon affected the local restaurants, however. In 1969, Mr. Weaver fulfilled his goal of retiring by age forty, and sold his majority ownership of Jiffy to another corporation. At that time, Jiffy had fifty-seven stores in ten states. The new owners, though, were unable to maintain the founder’s formula for success, and the Jiffy chain was dissolved in 1971 after going into bankruptcy.
Paul Howe and his family continued the Dodds Avenue restaurant as Howe’s Drive-in until his death in 1980. The building has since been home to various businesses including a day care center. The Jiffy Drive-In on Ringgold Road became the address for a new Camera and Craft location, and later occupied by Wolf Camera. The East 23rd Street store became John’s Drive-In under owner John Mitchell. The building was later occupied by the Chicken Plus meat market, followed by the Labor Ready employment agency. At this location, the Jiffy sign has been painted over, but the shape is still recognizable to former Jiffy patrons. Those Jiffy signs and others of their era are appreciated by some as works of art, and sometimes are found at antique advertising dealers.
For more information on the Jiffy Drive-In, please see Jeff Stooksbury’s article that was featured in the restaurant nostalgia publication, “The Greasy Spoon,” and their Web site, http://www.missouri.edu/~burhansd/greasy%20spoon.html. Thanks also to a grandson of Mr. Weaver for his help with this article. If you have memories of the Jiffy Drive-In, please contact me at jolleyh@signaldata.net.