Dinner Break! - Burger King - St. Cloud, MN

When you want to go nowhere for breakfast...

Although, I did go through the drive thru at this St. Cloud for breakfast, once. But I was just a spectator. It was far too early in the day to introduce Burger King to my system, without disastrous consequences. But someone driving needed a Croissanwich...

I was sitting in the passenger seat of this white molester van. I wasn't drugged, I was just very tired. That van was owned by one Crazy Carl. Who was running Griffy's Old Town Bar & Grill, in Genola, MN, at the time. We closed the bar and cleaned up the place until 3am, the night before. But we were back at Griffy's to get the bar ready to open, the next day. After pounding a bunch of coffee and cigarettes, we were off on a morning supply run to Sam's Club, in St. Cloud.

Wasted Quarter issue #58 - Crime Drama! - March 2006

I'd gone up to Genola a few times during 2004-05. Griffy's Old Town Bar & Grill served as a quick vacation away from Crapids, during the Minnesota Mistake. I had fun up there, and wish I would have gone up more often. The journal entries made over those trips became a stand alone issue of Wasted Quarter, the next year. It's one of my favorite issues I ever wrote, and plan on adapting it for a story here, at some point in the future.

When I drove up to St. Cloud, MN, on May 18, 2019, for a baseball card show, I found this Burger King had closed. 

To be more specific, the St. Cloud Burger King closed in April, 2018.

I found that information somewhere online. I don't remember where.

I pulled into the parking lot for a walk around the building on May 18, 2019. It was gray and overcast that day, and had recently rained. The pavement was still damp, with standing water scattered around the property.

Pointing this out because I also stopped by on March 7, 2020 to see if there was anything Burger Kingery to update. It was bright and sunny that day. While it wasn't warm at all, the sunlight was intense enough to melt some snow. Which kind of makes the date of each picture easier to tell, in case I forgot to note it.

I'd driven up to St. Cloud this time, to take pictures of the Press Bar, which had recently been destroyed by an intentional fire. The owner, Andrew Charles Welsh, plead guilty to arson, in September, 2022. Welsh was sentenced to 71 months in prison and over $3 million in restitution. But that has nothing to do with this abandoned St. Cloud Burger King...

Today's story is going to trace my 2019 visit (since I took more pictures that day), with 2020 photos mixed in where they best line up. 

Now let's hit that drive thru and replicate our September 2004 visit to the then open, St. Cloud Burger King! 

Approaching the menu board... Sure doesn't seem like a whole lot options are available this morning. 

Oh, it's our turn now!

"Yeah... A Bacon, Egg and Cheese Croissanwich and oh hell, I'd like one of those Spicy Crispy Chicken Sammiches... Like in the advertisement laying on the ground, over in the dumpster area..."

NO MAYO!!!

"That'll be way too much money for the quality of food we're about to hand you, please pull up to the window!"

On May 18, 2019...

And on March 7, 2020.

A slow moving glacier has overtaken the St. Cloud Burger King drive thru. I nearly fell on my ass several times, in just trying to get to that window. As soon as I started walking on this, I had to question both my sanity, and if there was really anything worthwhile to see past the ice. This isn’t the best place to shatter one’s pelvis. Who knows how long I’d have to sit there in a pool of my own blood before help ever came.

Okay, I’m overreacting…

Heheheheh... Good thing I don't have any $50.00 or $100.00 dollar bills… Ever!

May 18, 2019. Looking in the drive thru window, down the line towards the cashier stands.

Lots of broken stuff littering the floor.

Backing up a bit for larger view. 

Roughly the same view from March 7, 2020. Some equipment has been moved. Some has been moved out. I wonder if there had been a store fixture auction/sale at some point between then and earlier then? Either way, no one has really shown any interest in cleaning anything up.

Some broken windows there. Looks like someone tried to get inside. Probably for the Chicken Fries. Which are surprisingly not awful... Unfortunately, the broken windows allowed for an entire winter to blow into the Burger King, causing some minor flooding inside. Causing some major damage, since it wasn’t dealt with…

Sure, there was no ice around the window, so it was just the getting here part. There was more ice leading out of the the drive thru, But I could safely walk against the wall, in the snow and ice free landscaping rocks.

May 18, 2019. Looking in the first lobby window. Doesn't look too bad inside. The floor is a bit dirty, but judging from this picture alone, one could be lead to believe that with a bit of cleaning attention, this Burger King could be ready to open with a little effort.

March 7, 2020. This isn't good... There's a lot of water all over the floor. No one is likely coming to clean it up, so all of the surfaces are likely to soon become a mold farm. This Burger King has gone from being reasonably usable, to an expensive mess to clean, may as well tear it down situation, in just 8 months. 

The condiment kiosk and Double Quarter Pound King advertisements have been removed from the lobby. Replaced by fallen ceiling tiles and water from a leaky roof and leakier shattered drive thru windows. 

The BK Kids Playground has been dismantled and removed as well.

But they left the shoe shelves!

May 18, 2019. Looking in the last lobby window. The BK Kids Playground is intact, beyond the rows of booths and tables. Looks pretty decent. There's even those weird plastic high chairs stacked by the door.

March 7, 2020. No more weird plastic high chairs stacked by the door. Some of the chairs are missing and all have been shuffled around. And there's no more Toddler Habitrail beyond the far windows.

I took this photo from the parking lot of Target, across Lincoln Ave, to the west of Burger King. For reference, you can see the drive thru lane I just walked down. Now I'm about to turn the corner and look into the west facing windows. Behind the patio tables out front.

A closer look at said patio tables.

If I still smoked, that stone cylinder ashtray would be ideal outside my garage...

May 18, 2019. Looking in the west exit door. There's already some broken ceiling tiles with water damage, falling on to the floor. This is one of those early 1990's style Burger Kings, with the aquarium in the center of the seating pile. I always liked those. Watching fish in a tank is always cool, especially while eating a side of BK Chicken Tenders...

March 7, 2020. The water damaged ceiling tiles don't appear to have gotten worse over the last 8 months. I'd expected to see damage above the fountain area, given the mess on the floor, but that doesn't appear to be the case. That means all of the water on the floor didn’t come from leaky Coke, rather the broken windows that let snow and ice fill the kitchen prep line all winter.

May 18, 2019. Moving down to the windows before the BK Kids Playground. Some of the tabletops have the St. Cloud State University logo on them. You'd think the school could use something like this, but it's probably not worth the hassle for them to extricate and repurpose.

March 7, 2020. The chairs seemed to have played game of Musical Themselves recently, and several lost. I've also been trying to figure out what that crap is on top of the booth bench back. My first thought was mold, but it hasn’t grown in the past 8 months. I kept trying to get a decent interior shot that included the menu board above the main counter. But there was too great of distance, plus reflections that just wouldn't allow for it.

ENHANCE!!

Yeah, this was about as good as I was getting. My dreams of reading that menu board are just too grand and unrealistic.

Guess I'll have to settle for that "1 Reserved" sign...

March 7, 2020. I'm about to take a look at the BK Kids Playground, and I see that one of the tall panes of glass has been covered with plywood. Since I quickly found out the Toddler Habitrail had been disassembled and removed. I wonder if they took the window out to get it out of the building? All of the pieces may have been too bulky to maneuver around the store and out the doors.

May 18, 2019. Yeah, this doesn't show enough of it.

But there's a reflection of the Target sign across the street!

March 7, 2020. Looking in the same window, at what remains of the BK Kids Playground. Pretty decent sized room, once you take away all of the plastic kid stuff...

And crappily cover the Burger King sign in plastic bags, held together with random pieces of tape. How this has stood up to now five years of Minnesota's seasonal cycles is beyond me. But I do like the artistic quality of the tree branches above it, in this picture. 

This is your St. Cloud guide to aaarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrt...

Now this picture is so bad that I really shouldn't have used it. But it does show the size and construction of the pink and purple kid cubes. I'm betting all of these had to be taken out through a broken window, instead of that small door.

May 18, 2019. Main entrance to the Burger King. The large window into the BK Kids Playground is on the immediate left. A smaller window looking into the dining area, sits just beyond it.

Uh oh! The BK Kids Playground has some rules for you to follow...

ENHANCE!!

Cool, unlike the menu board, I was able to get a legible photo of the rules and standards...

In Comic Sans!

1. Melancholy adults cannot supervise kids.

2. If you're 3-11, you're screwed.

3. Doesn't specify which part of the body your socks need to be on. Barefoot with ear warmers is perfectly acceptable. And what about where this whole children’s terrarium was relocated? They left the shoe shelves behind! So whomever bought it, now can’t use it, because they forgot to bring the shoe shelves with…

4. No climbing on the nets is so important that it's not only rule #4, but it also gets it very own additional red circle, outside the 7 commandments.

5. No Food! What, do you think Burger King is some sort of restaurant or something?

6. Okay, you're leaving WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY too much leeway with this rule. What constitutes "anything weird"? If I were a kid, I'd be testing that one out on management until Burger King permanently 86'd my parents. 

7. Not even stolen dreams...

March 7, 2020. Hmmmm... Since the opposite side of that plywood has a reflection, now I'm pretty confused. That glass wasn't damaged at all. And I also see 2 waters and a Mountain Dew. 

They're violating BK Kids Playground rule number 5!!!

May 18, 2019. Looking inside the front doors.

March 7, 2020. Looking inside the front doors.

Eight months later...

May 18, 2019. Looking inside the side window, next to those front doors. This area has the shape and layout of what was likely a glassed-in atrium, before the BK Kids Playground was added on years later. Which would match the typical layout of an early 1980's Burger King, with the early 1990's remodel package to upgrade the building.

March 7, 2020. Alternate view of the ex-atrium, through the vestibule.

(My best to you and yours...)

May 18, 2019. Across the cashier/order pick-up area, with the fountain in the distance.

March 7, 2020. Here's something else that's new, the water was shut off in October of 2019. May just as well turn it off, there's enough of it spilled it all over the floor already...

May 18, 2019. Yes, I did open the lid, and there was still a bunch of rancid grease inside.

Then I closed it quickly.

The dumpster zone was actually a duplex. This half was fairly empty...

The other half was now being used as someone's bedroom. I'm glad they weren't still sleeping when I walked in. I love how the coffee machine was moved from inside the Burger King, to the Burger King dumpster area, next to whomever's bed this has become.

There's his or her bag, next to some more removed Burger King equipment. From the looks of things, my invisible homeless friend was slowly migrating the Burger King outside. Perhaps their master plan was to reopen the Burger King out of the dumpster zone. Serving Bacon, Egg and Cheese Croissanwiches and Spicy Crispy Chicken Sammiches, Al Fresco style?

Then we wont miss breakfast!

March 7, 2020. Time to drive back home to Crapids. I see some of those patio tables and benches have been removed, since last May. In order to properly write this story, I should have probably driven back up to St. Cloud, to see what the Burger King looks like 3 and a half years later. 

But I didn't...

A quick look at the Googles Street View shows the former Burger King is still standing, pretty much as I last saw it. More of the windows are boarded up, including the entire drive thru window, and several on the south side. While you can’t see inside very well, it looks like some more of the interior has been taken apart. Additional “No Trespassing” signs have been posted around the perimeter. Likely because of me... 

Google recognizes this property as part of neighboring UHaul. But as of July 2023, they haven’t done anything with the building. The construction trailer and piles of dirt on the left side of this screen capture, is due to the road expansion of Highway 23, just to the south.

As far as my abandoned building photo archives go, Burger King (Littleton, CO) ranks right up there with various Kmarts (Like in Minneapolis or Rochester). Not sure which I have more pictures of... But as far as my Burger Kings go, this was one of the best ones.

Come Thank Again You too!