bkenosha magazine

Christina Schwartz loves co-owning Franks Diner and cooking for people, but she is not “a morning person.” If she had her way, she would not get up at the crack of dawn to open the diner and cook. “My regulars know not to talk to me for the first hour of the day. I will cook their meals. They can talk away. Just leave me alone,” she said in a recent interview. “I don’t drink coffee. I wake up naturally.” She always tells people she should have bought a bar because “it would have been a much easier thing in my life.” But, she’s “getting used to the hours” she keeps at the diner.

Christina Schwartz and her partner, Lynn Groleau, bought Franks Diner in 2001. They are the first non family members to own the diner. John Gilmore and Don Franks owned the diner for 22 years before they decided to retire in 2001.

Chris, a Kenosha native, and Lynn, who grew up mostly in Beaver Dam, have known each other since 1990. They met when they were both social workers. Lynn worked in adult crisis and Chris was the Associate Kenosha Youth Development Services Crisis Coordinator. In 2002, they went on a vacation and decided they couldn’t do social work much longer. “You kind of get the mentality of ‘Is this normal?’” They wanted to do some kind of service industry; food, bar, inn, bed and breakfast. “We like being around people. We like entertaining people. We like talking to people. We like to cook for people.” But they weren’t sure what they wanted to do. Two weeks after they returned from their vacation, Lynn came home and told Chris that Franks Diner was for sale. “We said let’s go look at it. John brought us in and we looked at it and ninety days later we had a diner.” They took it over on October 3, 2001. “We never looked back after that. We left our big-girl jobs and started running a diner.”

It has been a lot of work. Franks is open seven days a week for breakfast and lunch. The first couple of years there were no days off. All their time and energy went into building clientele and “establishing that the diner was still here.” The hard part for Chris and Lynn was trying to figure out how to have a life outside of the diner.

“There was no time away. We still don’t always have that. We get a little more now after eight years.”

As for the rest of it; learning how to short order cook and “cooking for mass quantities,” they learned on the job. “We just had to try and learn as it came. Luckily for us, it was slow enough where we were able to build up.” One reason for this is was that many people had forgotten about Franks Diner. “People from Kenosha had no clue that the diner was still around.”

Another reason Chris thinks it was slow initially was the “issue of downtown.” The clients that came in told her that there was nothing to do downtown, so why bother coming down in the first place. “I think that had a lot to do with it. When Lynn and I took over in 2001 it was pretty sparse down here. There wasn’t a whole lot going on.” As downtown developed over the last seven years and as the Diner established a solid and consistent business, new clientele was brought in. Maybe of these people became regulars.

Before she took over the diner, Chris spent a week shadowing John Gilmore, learning the ropes as best she could and getting to know some of the regulars. She still remembers meeting Lenny Palmer and Mike Schumacher for the first time. Palmer and Schumacher had heard two women were taking the diner over. Schumacher asked if she was “going to put curtains on the windows?” Chris looked at Mike and said “No, We’re just going to clean it up a little bit.” Chris and Lynn were regulars of the diner, often eating there on the weekends.

“We love the diner. We didn’t want to change it. We just wanted to enhance it.”

Chris and Lynn did change the menu, but not dramatically. They added some of their own recipes and took off some items that weren’t that popular. They added a turkey club sandwich, for example, and the “Blue Shoe,” which is a blue cheese and bacon stuffed burger, named after Mike Shumacher. Another new item is the “Ave Marie,” (fried eggs, sausage and cheese on an english muffin) named after its creator, Maria Caravati, the owner of Equinox Boutique downtown. “If people create things and it is popular we will throw it on the menu,” Chris said.

The famed “Garbage Plate” that John Gilmore created in the 80’s is Frank’s signature breakfast. Chris and Lynn added optional ingredients. Before, ham was the only meet choice. Chris and Lynn added sausage, bacon, and vegetables. Customers can chose what they want and make the “Garbage Plate” their own. One of the casualties of the new ownership is the hot hamburger item that had been on the menu for about 50 years. It is a special now. “It goes much better,” Chris noted. Frank’s has lunch specials Monday through Friday.

Chris and Lynn feel fortunate to be running Franks Diner. “We’re lucky to be part of this institution and make it what it is. It is a good thing to have down here. It is a draw for the downtown to have tha t oddity that is Frank’s Diner.” It is such a draw that a national TV program, the Food Channel’s “Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives” with Guy Fieri, profiled the diner in one of its episodes two years ago. “What that has brought, not only to us, but to Kenosha, is a very positive thing. We still get people who come in because they saw us on TV.”

One manifestation of the iconic nature of the diner is that Chris and Lynn have never put an add in the paper for a job at the diner. “I’ve always had people who were regulars here or grew up in the diner saying “I want to work here. Can I do this?” This results in “a lot of change over” because many of their employees leave for college or move on to other things. But their youthful or offbeat spirit adds to the charm of the diner. “We’ve got a good crew,” Chris noted with satisfaction.

Another important aspect of Franks Diner is the spirit of acceptance manifested there. This is very important to Chris and Lynn.

“Your not talking a bout who’s here, what was not here, who your sitting next to, who is in the both next to you.”

I don’t want to hear the crap. Everyone is welcome here regardless of who they are or what they want to be or where they think they need to be. We made sure we cut that. Don and John made sure of that. That was the concept when they took over as well as when Don’s father was here. It didn’t matter how much money or what color you were or who you belonged to or who you wanted to be with, this is a place where you could be safe.”

So, the next time you’re at Franks Diner and see Chris, if it is early, don’t expect much conversation; just let her make your food. Stand against the wall, stay in line, and don’t block the doorway. Don’t shout. Take your feet off the furniture and sit up straight and stop fidgeting.

Remember, whining is unattractive. Everything is good today. Eat your vegetables. Order what you want, eat what you get. Don’t be a stranger. Please pay at the register (cash only) and thank you.

Franks Diner
508 58th St
Kenosha, WI 53140
(262) 657-1017
www.franksdinerkenosha.com