The Old Days

All present-day photos on this site are the exclusive property of Mike Wheeler and may not be used for any commercial purpose.

       
   

Goody Goody in 1932

   
         
   

 

Although most longtime Tampa residents associate the Goody Goody with the Stayer family and its Florida Ave. location, the restaurant's Tampa start was actually on what is now Kennedy Blvd, with an earlier owner.  Ralph A. Stephens began the drive-in as a barbecue stand in 1925 at 1629 Grand Central Avenue at Rome Avenue. 

Above and below:  The original Goody Goody on Grand Central Ave (now Kennedy Blvd).  Notice the sign pained on the building, "Goody Goody Barbeque No. 2"

 
   

 

All the carhops back then were male.  Stephens had another unit going within a year or two on North Florida Avenue, near Hillsborough Avenue.  But in 1929, he and his wife apparently had the roving spirit, because he answered a classified ad.  The ad was placed by William Bechtel Stayer, who had been a successful lumber insurance man as well as executive director of a lumber dealers association in Pittsburgh. 

   
   
THE RALPH STEPHENS STORY and GOODY GOODY "No. 1"
It was in the early 1920s that Ralph Stephens took his first shot at the restaurant business, opening first at NW 4th and Olie in Oklahoma City, and then later at Main and Broadway. Competition and a lot of debt led him to leave Oklahoma City in 1923 with his wife, Amanda, sons Vince and Bob, and daughter Dolores.

The family moved to Dallas where Stephens later said he saw “a pig stand with what looked like a thousand cars around it.”  Indeed, Dallas was where the very first pig stand (forerunners to drive-through restaurants), Kirby’s, had opened in 1921.

Stephens was hired by one of the Dallas pig stand chains and learned the operation in Dallas before setting out to open a stand in Little Rock. Before doing this, Stephens took his family to his wife’s family house in Hannibal, MO, and while visiting with his father-in-law, he decided it made more sense to open their own business rather than work for someone else.

Construction started on the Stephens' family business, and the family “slept in the stand” while it was being built.  In June of 1925, Goody-Goody Barbeque in Hannibal, MO, opened for business. Business initially boomed, but the crowds disappeared once cold weather settled in.  Once again, Stephens was a failed restaurateur.

“We closed, and being sort of soldiers in fortune, we took off for Florida,” Stephens explained in a 1968 interview. “The land boom was on then and we went to Tampa and opened one restaurant, then another. They had told us there were no rooms in Tampa so we bought a tent and slept under that until we almost flooded out.”

The crash of 1929 once again killed Stephens’ short-lived success story and it was then that he sold the business to William Stayer. The Stephens family returned to Oklahoma City with Ralph determined to settle his debts and prove he could be a successful restaurant operator.  He went on to establish "Delores Restaurant," named for his daughter. 

 

The Ralph Stephens story and photo comes from http://www.doloresrestaurant.com where you can read more about the Stephens family and the years after Tampa.

   
 

When William Stayer's second marriage failed, he bought a grove and spent a winter in Winter Haven.  After a move back to Lakeland, he felt the itch to get back into business.  As son Carl Stayer wrote in a reminiscence years later, "Dad didn't have enough to do.  He traveled over to Tampa frequently to eat dinner in the great Spanish restaurants and drink in the bars.."  

 

W. B. Stayer's ad read:  "Have $10,000 to invest, would like to buy a small business."  He got lots of replies, many came from barbeque stands caught in the economic collapse of the late 1920's.  Daughter Betty Stayer Hendryson, who lives in Albuquerque, NM, said her father had vowed not to buy a barbeque stand, but did anyway.  Ralph Stephens' Goody Goody appealed to him.  Married by then to a former nurse in Lakeland, Stayer moved his family to Tampa and became a restaurant operator.  "He could not do short-order cooking, run the cash register or wash the dishes," Carl Stayer wrote.  

     William B. Stayer

   
    "What he did might be called maitre d' in a class restaurant and public relations officer in a large corporation.  W. B. Stayer monitored the drive-in section and met the customers.  A gregarious sort, he had a personality described as "dignified and infectious."  He sold himself and his business wherever he went.    
    "It was a humble business, but he raised the restaurant up.." Carl Stayer said.  In the early 1930's, Stayer pulled back after starting a branch in Jacksonville.  He consolidated his Tampa operations at a new downtown location.  Despite the depression gripping the country, the Goody Goody "clicked" at 1119 Florida Avenue.  Stayer capitalized on his assets:  recipes that customers liked and employees who performed their job well.  In addition to Annabelle Johnson, there was legendary butcher, Nathaniel Wilson, remembered by his nickname "Peanuts."  He bought beef quarters and ground them up, adding just the right amount of fat to make mouth-watering hamburgers.  Although "Barbeque" stayed on the signs and on the menu for years, the Goody made its reputation with its hamburgers--liberally doused with barbeque sauce--and its pies.  The sauce and pie recipes were closely guarded secrets.

 Carl Stayer          

   
   

 

Click to enlarge images

        ggld photo circa 60s.JPG (112690 bytes)        ggld newpaper article yvonne photo.JPG (73656 bytes)

                       Circa 1960s                    June 1995                   

      

   
    Stayer family life gravitated around 1119 Florida Avenue.  For Betty Stayer Hendryson, it was a great place to bring her high school friends after a dance.  Sometimes the tab shot as high as $2.50, which she charged to her dad.  But he soon ordered her to "cease and desist!"    
         
   

Sons Bill and Bob Stayer got involved n the business--with Bob, the youngest, becoming his father's mainstay in the day-to-day operation.  Another son, Glenn, became a doctor in Birmingham, Alabama.  But Bob Stayer, a popular young man, died in a tragic drowning accident about 1945.  Only after that did eldest son Carl, leave his job with GMAC in Harrisburg, PA,  bring his family to Tampa and take over the business.  Meanwhile, his father and his wife had bought a farm at Palm River around 1940.  It was an older dairy farm, with milk cows, and he raised sugar cane.  At that time, youngsters Elizabeth and Peter New--Betty's children--came to live with their grandparents on the farm.  Elizabeth New Weld, who lived there when she was 2 years old until she was 6, remembers getting bathed and dressed every afternoon for the trip to the Goody Goody. 

                           Feb 24, 1941 - Inside the Goody Goody

 

Goody Goody in 1941

 

   
   

After she and her brother ate supper in the restaurant, they would entertain themselves, waiting with their grandmother while their grandfather went off to play cards at the Elks Club.  Although she was tiny at the time, she remembers the employees.  "The waitresses always seemed so wonderful," Weld said.  "They were so good to us, and they were wonderful looking women.  They had a certain snappy talk, always cheerful."  She also recalls the managers--Lionel "Cicero" Roberts, William Mote and Milt Gaston.

 

Gaston, (86 at the time of this article) and living in Bradenton, is the oldest former ball player for the Boston Red Sox.  He managed the Goody Goody for a number of years before becoming a Hillsborough County Sheriff's deputy.  Mote, 66, recalls that there were big signs posted when he came to work in 1941:  "No Tips, Please."  The carhops were still young men, and the going salary was 20 cents per hour.

 

   
    During World War II, the male carhops were replaced by women. (The above narrative comes from the newspaper article which is framed and hanging in the Goody Goody.)    
   

AHH! THOSE GOOD-LOOKING GOODY GOODY GIRLS!

Just a chance to flirt with a bevy of pretty car-hops was enough to draw the guys to The Goody Goody at 1119-21 Florida Ave. in the glory days before and after World War II. But the food - especially those delicious pies-was the best in town. The popular restaurant was family-owned from 1929 when William B. Stayer bought the place until it was closed in May 1984. A few months later, in January 1985, one of the long-time Goody Goody girls, Yvonne Freeman, reopened the landmark. This photo was taken about 1945.    Photo from HAMPTON DUNN COLLECTION

 

From "Tampa pastimes: Those good-looking Goody Goody girls." Sunland Tribune 15/1 (November 1989):

 

   
         
         
   

Notice in the photo at top of page that the front of the restaurant is set back from the street.  The dining area was expanded at some time towards Florida Avenue and took up the yard space in the front of the building.  In the attic crawl space above the expanded dining area, can be found the original front wall with the original sign painted on the wall.

   
   

               

   
   

   
   

This partition marks the original dining area to the left, from the expanded area to the right.

   

     

 

Goody Goody p1   |    Goody Goody p2

 

The End of an Era:  Last Day P.1    |   Last Day P.2   |   Last Day P.3   |  Last Day P.4    |   Demolition

 

Scene from the movie "The Punisher" filmed in the Goody Goody

 
 

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