Groceteria.com

Is anyone familiar with this chain? It looks like they don't exist in anywhere else than California anymore, but I've dug up some mid-1970s phone book listings that verify a few in Detroit and one in Lansing. None of these seem to have made it out of the 1970s; Lansing was already a stereo store in 1976 (it's now an optician) and most of the Detroit ones were converted to KFC by the end of the decade.

IIt seems that KFC owned the brand at some point, which would explain the conversions, but does anyone know more about the chain? How far did it stretch out? Why did so many of them close?

There was one in San Jose, on Meridian Avenue just south of I-280, for a number of years. I believe it is now closed.

H. Salt's most famous appearance was arguably in "This Is Spinal Tap."

Are you sure they're gone from California? Granted the copyright is 7 years ago, but they have a website (of sorts) still up:

http://www.hsalt.com/locations.htm

I can confirm locations in Hampton and Newport News, VA in the early 1970s. That is all that I ever saw of the chain, and we traveled a great deal in Virginia and North Carolina in that era.

Wayne Henderson

submariner wrote:Are you sure they're gone from California? Granted the copyright is 7 years ago, but they have a website (of sorts) still up:

http://www.hsalt.com/locations.htm

My fingers got ahead of my mind. I meant to say "don't exist outside California."

This was a memory shaker. I think they had a one or more in the Toledo area during the 70s. I don't think they made it to Cleveland. They were gone by the early 80s. I don't think I ever saw them anywhere else. The various fish & chips chains topped out somewhere in the 70s/early 80s and have mostly been slowly disappearing ever since. i would guess that they had a similar history.

^Long John Silver's seems to have come out of the 1970s and 1980s pretty much unscathed, actually. The 1990s, on the other hand...

All these chains including LJS began to decline in the 80s. The price of fish went up because of "Cod wars" and they became less competitive with the burger and chicken chains, plus by then, fast food was getting pretty saturated.

Wendy's had an excellent fish sandwich (real fish, not a fish patty like McD's) which came and went in the early 80s because of this. it was never rolled out to all of their stores.

It looks like the San Francisco Bay Area ones are gone, according to the web site. I remembering seeing some of them in the late 90s in that area.

There was one in Portland, and it was a favorite of my dad's. We went there semi-regularly during my childhood. It was a dead ringer for the one in This Is Spinal Tap.

I'd love to try them again.

There were two H. Salt, Esq., restaurants in Tacoma, one at 6th & Alder and one at 5415 Pacific Ave. They were built in 1969-70 and operated by Harman Management Corp., which is KFC's biggest franchisee. These locations folded around 1978.

It's obvious that the building prototype was basically the same one used for Kentucky Fried Chicken locations, with the major modification being the big "tower" in front of H. Salt.

As late as 1971, there was also an H.Salt location in Tampa, Florida. I'm not aware of any other Florida locations, but it's probable that there were others.

I recently moved to Anaheim, near he Garden Grove border... And was ecstatic to find this a couple streetlights down the road!


H. Salt by dirtyblueshirt, on Flickr

There was a location in Birmingham, AL, in May 1972. A scan of a newspaper advertisement is
featured in the This Month in History on birminghamrewound.com this month. This is a great site with many old restaurant, store, and supermarket ads.