8 things to know about Village Inn as it celebrates 50 years
Saturday is a big day for Village Inn. The restaurant — one of the oldest in town — celebrates 50 years of purveying pancakes, pie and (these days) pretzel-bun sandwiches. The owners are Springfield’s Greene family, among them brothers Bob and Bill Greene.
To celebrate, Bob and Bill are throwing a party. From 2 to 9 p.m., the 50th Bash, Bands and BBQ festival serves up free food, family-friendly fun and music performances by Vic Vaughan and the Souled Out, the Mullets, Techs and the Roadies, School of Rock, Lindsey and Daniel, plus Bob and the Bobcats. It all happens in the parking lot behind Village Inn’s flagship, 2036 S. Glenstone Ave. It’s a good idea to bring your own lawn chairs.
On the occasion of this milestone in Springfield’s food scene, I sat down with Village Inn’s brothers-in-chief to rack up a list of eight fun things you may not know about this SGF food-stitution.
1. Village Inn once restaged the Civil War. Kind of. For 26 years, VI had two stores on Glenstone Ave.: one north, one south. For an unconventional ad campaign, Bob and Bill Greene poked fun at Springfield’s north side/south side rivalry. Bob played Confederate general Robert E. Lee; Bill played for team Union as Ulysses S. Grant. “I was knocking him off the (billboard) sign for our campaign,” said Bob Greene. “Brothers are just that way; everybody knows that.” Bob said he’s always been the front-of-house guy, face and voice of the restaurant, while Bill heads for the kitchen and crunches the numbers. “I’ll give away the farm, (Bill) will say, if he doesn’t stop me - and that’s probably true.”
Bill said the brothers have never been rivals. “It’s not really a rivalry,” he joked. “I didn’t have to show I was better — it was very apparent. I didn’t want to make (Bill) feel bad. He was older than me.”
2. Village Inn got its start because a husband and parent had to reinvent himself. “Basically, my father was in the insurance business for 25 years,” said Bob Greene. “He lost his job at age 50, and could not find a job where they’d pay him enough. It’s like any time a man loses his job at 50: it’s a (*****)! So he decided to become his own boss and bought the franchise in 1965.” The first three years were lean times for the family, until the business turned the corner.
3. Both Greenes got their start in the family restaurant as teens. Bill (age 60) said he began by busing tables one night a week, plus weekends, paid in cash. He wasn’t yet old enough to drive, so a Baptist Bible College student employed in the kitchen drove him home at the end of the night. They talked about the Bible. Bob is 66.
4. There have never been any dramatic menu changes at Village Inn; consistently serving breakfast all the time is what’s kept VI popular, both brothers said. In 2015, you can get an omelette with artichokes, feta cheese and carnitas if you like, but that’s about as foodie-forward as it gets. “Since about 1990, our pies have come on as a strong point,” Bob Greene said. The bestselling pie is French silk, while the second-best-seller is a classic double-crusted apple pie. Bob isn’t sure what the third-best-selling pie is. It’s a distant third. There are more than 20 varieties of pie available, on a rotating basis.
5. Those signature orange-and-chocolate upholstered booths? They were chosen for a reason. Bob Greene said that eight years ago, VI remodeled and redesigned in search of a younger clientele, with brighter colors and a new logo featuring emoticon smiley-faces. The dining booths were redone to look exactly the way they had in 1965. People really dug it, including many of the 60- to 90-somethings who make up a big part of VI’s base.
6. A strip of concrete on the roadway could have killed Village Inn, but it never got the chance. “There was almost a center concrete median down Glenstone back in the latter ’60s,” Bob Greene explained. His father worried that the state of Missouri’s transportation plan would make it harder for hungry drivers to turn off the avenue into their parking lot. He and a half-dozen other business leaders on South Glenstone went to Jefferson City. “And we ended up with no center median,” Bob said.
7. Charity work is a calling for the Greenes. “I call it our pancake ministry,” Bob said. In 1970, they began with a simple pancake fundraiser for St. Agnes church; today, they do 12 to 15 events per year, with Boys & Girls Club being the main focus. “We also do churches, scout troops; we did the Relay for Life breakfast, we started the Day of Caring breakfast with March of Dimes, we’ve done the (Dickerson Park) Zoo, we work with Discovery Center on the Moonlight Ride.” Bob is also very proud of a fundraiser VI did with Cherokee Middle School that brought in enough funds to buy six new computers for students.
8. Expect gradual change as the third generation of Greenes — sons Chip Greene and Billy Greene and other family members — begins running VI. “We’ve seen a whole lot of restaurants come and go in Springfield,” Bill said. “We can’t count many who’ve been here longer.” The Greenes emphasize their conservative approach to the restaurant game, and they tip their hats to other Springfield food-scene mainstays such as nearby Mexican Villa, Anton’s Coffee Shop and Aunt Martha’s Pancake House.