Some thoughts about Wimpy

As part of something else I was researching I discovered that there are some pretty neat “firsts” from burger chain Wimpy and Lyons (UK Wimpy’s parent company). I’ve got a childhood memory of Wimpy in some north England town (its location is irrelevant) and a much more modern love of the Dingwall Wimpy. The UK companies were way ahead of their time and it’s worth celebrating Wimpy before they vanish forever. Wimpy was the first American-style “fast food” chain in the post-war UK (1954), ahead of McDonalds (1974) and Burger King (1976). The brand was already established in the US but the expansion to the UK required a very British take on fast food that was an evolution of the existing offering from Lyon’s tea shops. Table service, like a diner. Home of the “Bender in a Bun” frankfurter sausage bent into a circle so that it fitted into a burger bun. Fish things were in the “shanty” range. Their eyeless mascot was a daft looking cartoon Beefeater (and bore no resemblance to the Popeye character J. Wellington Wimpy who inspired the brand name to begin with due to “loving burgers as much as Popeye loved his spinach”). Food came on red plates.

The “firsts” from Wimpy and their parent company Lyons:

• The 1984 “Mr. Wimpy” “The Hamburger Game” video game. Whilst food brand tie-in games existed already (Kool-Aid Man in 1983, Purina dog food Chase the Chuck Wagon in 1983 and Coke’s direct attack on rivals with Pepsi Invaders in 1983) it was one of the first, if not the first, video game tie-ins with a restaurant. (Dominos didn’t get there until 1989 with Avoid The Noid, McDonald’s didn’t make any games until 1992’s M.C. Kids and it was 2006 until Burger King had a go). 

• One of the UK’s first companies to use computers on a large scale and certainly the first to see their potential to the extent of founding their own computing company spin-off - LEO (Lyons Electronic Office).

• The LEO computer from Lyons was the first computer program demonstrated (operated?) by a British monarch (Elizabeth II on 15 Feb 1951).  

• Mary Coombs is credited with being the first female commercial programmer in Britain, working on the LEO computer system in 1952. 

• It may have taken until 2020 to introduce a vegan option but they were trailblazing as a fast food chain introducing quorn in 1997 and their meat free bean burger in 1986 was way ahead of its time (and to be fair on the vegan thing, roughly the same time for McDonalds, Dominos and KFC).

• Wimpy was the first American-style burger restaurant in France.