6 Regional Restaurant Chains Kansans Defend to Out-of-Staters
Have you ever tried ordering a Spangles steakburger outside Kansas?
The name means nothing elsewhere.
Kansas has built a whole run of restaurant chains just like it, places that never bothered chasing customers past the state line.
These are the regional restaurant chains Kansans defend to out-of-staters.
1. Nu Way Cafe
Nu Way Cafe, a Wichita restaurant chain, has served the same crumbled, loose-meat burger from a single recipe since 1930.
Founder Tom McEvoy named the sandwich a crumbly, and the name stuck for good.
No patty holds it together.
Nu Way cooks the beef loose and piles it onto a bun, closer to a sloppy joe with the sauce left out than anything a fast-food counter serves today.
Out-of-staters expect a burger they can flip with a spatula.
Regulars just hand them a fork.
Nu Way still cooks every order on the same style of equipment the cafe has run for close to a century.
The chain never grew past a couple of storefronts around Wichita.
That’s the detail locals keep repeating to anyone who assumes a place this old must have spread everywhere by now.
2. Taco Tico
Taco Tico opened its first Wichita counter in 1962, when brothers Dan and Robin Foley started selling tacos, sanchos, and cinnamon crustos nobody else in Kansas was making.
By one count, the chain once ran to about 100 locations spread across the Midwest and the South.
Then it shrank hard.
What survives today sits mostly around Wichita and Topeka, run by individual owners keeping the name and the menu alive on their own.
A crispy taco still costs less than a fast-food combo, and the fried, cinnamon-dusted crusto remains the thing regulars order twice.
Anyone who grew up on Taco Tico get defensive fast when someone assumes it copied Taco Bell.
Taco Tico Is a Kansas Chain, Not a Taco Bell Copy
Taco Tico is a Kansas chain, and it shares nothing with Taco Bell but a birth year.
Glen Bell opened his first Taco Bell in Downey, California, in 1962, the exact same year Dan and Robin Foley opened Taco Tico two states away in Wichita.
Neither chain copied the other, and no ownership or menu item ever crossed between them.
3. Fritz’s Railroad Restaurant
Fritz’s Railroad Restaurant has delivered burgers by toy train since founder Fritz Kropf rigged the first version in his basement.
He opened his first diner in Kansas City, Kansas, in 1954, years before any train ever showed up.
The delivery system started as a fix for a labor shortage, not a gimmick.
Fritz built it himself and tested it at home.
It worked.
Customers started calling the overhead track “the train” once it reached his 18th Street location in the early 1970s, and Fritz leaned into it, hats and all.
Kids get a paper engineer’s cap at the table.
Their food arrives a minute later, riding a miniature railcar instead of a server’s tray.
Three restaurants still run the system today, in Shawnee, Kansas City, Kansas, and Kansas City, Missouri.
Try explaining that setup to someone who’s never seen it, and watch them assume you’re joking.
4. Braum’s
Braum’s ice cream stores blanket Oklahoma so thickly that many Oklahomans assume the chain is theirs.
It isn’t, not originally.
Henry Braum ran a small butter and milk plant in Emporia, Kansas, starting in 1933.
The family’s dairy business grew out of that one building for decades before an Oklahoma store ever opened.
His son Bill built an ice cream chain called Peter Pan on that same Kansas milk, growing it into dozens of stores.
Selling Peter Pan in 1967 came with a catch.
The deal barred Bill from selling ice cream in Kansas for ten years, which is exactly why the first true Braum’s store opened in Oklahoma City in 1968 instead.
The state eventually got its stores back.
Braum’s now runs more than 300 stores across five states, dozens of them sitting in the same state where the whole business started.
Psst! How much do you know about Kansas fast-food history? Take our quiz and see how many you can get right.
Quiz
Kansas Fast-Food Firsts
Answer these questions on Kansas’s biggest food firsts. We bet you can’t get them all right. Prove us wrong?
Which Wichita restaurant, opened in 1921, is now considered the country’s first fast-food hamburger chain?
5. Spangles
Every one of Spangles' restaurants sits inside Kansas, a run brothers Dale and Craig Steven started in January 1978.
It didn't start as a steakburger chain at all.
The brothers converted a hot dog stand into a Coney Island.
A citywide naming contest renamed the operation Spangles in 1984, since Coney Island couldn't be trademarked and franchised.
The chain grew to 26 restaurants, and every one of them still sits inside the state line.
Its Angus steakburgers and soft-serve counter have stayed a Kansas-only habit for nearly 50 years.
The Steven family finally sold Spangles in July 2026, ending five decades of local ownership.
The name stayed the same.
The new owners have said they plan to keep Spangles exactly what it's always been: A local favorite, not a chain chasing a bigger map.
6. Hog Wild Pit Bar-B-Q
Hog Wild Pit Bar-B-Q covers a longer list of cities than a typical regional barbecue chain reaches.
Wichita alone holds six locations.
That's just Wichita.
Hutchinson, Salina, El Dorado, Derby, Topeka, and Lawrence each keep a smokehouse running too, and the chain has added a couple more in Nebraska and Iowa besides.
Hog Wild piles the pulled pork under coleslaw and sauce, Carolina style, and smokes its brisket and ribs on-site every day.
A family pack feeds a table without anyone standing in line twice.
Order the stuffed potato instead of a side, and the kitchen piles it high enough to pass for a second entree.
Out-of-staters driving through on I-70 or I-35 have no reason to know the name.
Kansans passing through those same towns plan their route around it instead.
A pulled-pork sandwich runs a couple of dollars less than what a national chain charges for a fraction of the meat.
That gap is the whole argument Kansans make to anyone who wonders why they'd skip a name they already know.
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