‘Best hamburgers ever.’ How Scrubby and Lloyd’s became a SLO institution — and why it closed

It’s been nearly a quarter century since Lee Pettenger flipped the final hamburger patty at beloved San Luis Obispo burger joint Scrubby & Lloyd’s, bringing an end to a 65-year family restaurant dynasty.

But fans of the restaurant at 1136 Carmel St. still reminisce about its iconic food.

“I still miss Scrubby and Lloyd’s,” Harriet Atkins told The Tribune. “They made the best burgers!”

Former diners can share their memories on You Grew Up in SLO if you remember Scrubby and Lloyd’s, a Facebook group dedicated to the eatery, or buy T-shirts and tank tops bearing the Scrubby and Lloyd’s logo via online retailer Zazzle.

In a recent poll, the Tribune asked readers which long-gone restaurants they miss most. Nearly a quarter of the poll’s 80-plus respondents named Scrubby and Lloyd’s.

Survey respondent Eric Meyer recalled sitting at the bar at Scrubby and Lloyd’s, enjoying a “big flat pancake of a burger” with a side of potato salad.

”Wonderful. You dreamed of that burger,” he wrote via email.

“I grew up in SLO and wept when Scrubby & Lloyd’s closed. Best hamburgers ever,” Jim McDougal of Everett, Washington, wrote in a comment on a The Movement.com blog post about the restaurant. “Scrubby & Lloyd’s is one of those memories that I’ll fondly carry with me forever.”

So how did the restaurant get started? And how did it gain such a loyal following?

SLO ‘hamburger dynasty’ started with 2 restaurants

In 1933, Lee Pettenger’s dad and grandfather, Lloyd Pettenger and Albert “Bert” Pettenger, launched what would evolve into a five-restaurant burger dynasty.

Bert Pettenger, the former co-owner of a stage coach line that went all the way to San Simeon, started Dad’s Place on Higuera Street in San Luis Obispo.

His son Lloyd Pettenger, then 22, opened his own little eatery, Pettenger’s on Osos Street in downtown San Luis Obispo. Most people just called it “the little orange stand.”

Below its many windows, signs touted hamburgers, “good coffee,” candies, cigars and tobacco. On the roof was a small, free-standing sign advertising Golden State Ice Cream.

At Pettenger’s, “Hamburgers were a dime, hot dogs a nickel,” historian Matthew Herrera wrote in his 2020 monograph, “The Pettenger Family: A Hamburger Dynasty.” “The cozy eatery was the beginning of the Pettenger family’s reputation for serving outstanding hamburgers.”

That reputation, Herrera wrote, was “the standard for hamburger excellence in San Luis Obispo County … for the next six and a half decades.”

Meanwhile at Dad’s Place, Bert Pettenger sold beer, wine and soft drinks. But He soon added food to the menu, including hamburgers.

Over nearly seven decades and four family generations, members of the Pettenger family started, sold, or closed various restaurants in San Luis Obispo, including the original Pettenger’s and Dad’s Place, Pettenger’s Hamburger Haven on Santa Rosa Street and Pettenger’s Café on Monterey Street.

Then Lloyd Pettenger teamed up with his former employee Zada “Scrubby” Lewis to start their eponymous eatery.

How Scrubby and Lloyd’s got its start

The scrappy Lewis, who was one of 13 siblings, also had roots in a local restaurant.

Her older brother, Rex Lewis, had built and run Rex’s Café at 1136 Carmel St. (where Scrubby and Lloyd’s would eventually be). Then “Scrubby” took over, renaming it Zada’s Café, before going to work in 1956 for Lloyd Pettenger at Hamburger Haven.

By 1961, he and Lewis had teamed up to transform Zada’s Café into a their new Scrubby and Lloyd’s eatery with a horseshoe-shaped counter, outside patio and an outdoor telephone booth.

Pettenger’s sister, Elaine Pettenger Sylvester, as she’s now known, suggested the name Scrubby and Lloyd’s — inspired by Lewis’ unusual nickname. It stuck.

Lloyd Pettenger did the cooking and purchasing at the burger joint, while Lewis was the waitress. The partners shared food preparation and cleanup duties.

Elaine Pettenger Sylvester worked at Scrubby & Lloyd’s for her dad and then her brother.

At Scrubby & Lloyd’s, “One of my jobs was to slice the hamburger buns every day. Daddy didn’t like how presliced buns would just burn around the edges, so we sliced down the middle all of our hamburger buns,” Sylvester recalled, commenting on the same TheMovement.com blog post. “That was just one of many of the loving touches that did make Scrubby and Lloyd’s famous for having the best burger you could get.”

Lloyd Pettenger retired in 1972, giving Scrubby and Lloyd’s to his son Lee Pettenger.

A year later, the latter bought out Lewis’ share of the business, but she continued to work there on weekdays.

“She wrote it all out on a piece of paper,” Lee’s son, Ethan Pettenger, recalled recently. “’She handed it to my dad and told him ‘This is Scrubby’s pink slip.’ ”

How did restaurant make its famed burgers?

The Pettengers insist there was no recipe for Scrubby and Lloyd’s burgers, but employee Elizabeth O’Donnell described to Herrera how the legendary sandwiches stacked up.

Grill-toasted buns got a bit of yellow mustard on the top half, followed by a layer of Scrubby and Lloyd’s burger sauce. The bottom half got a smear of the sauce, a spoonful of diced onions, a couple of dill pickle chips, the burger or cheeseburger patty and a dollop of chili sauce.

Lee Pettenger, who will turn 76 on Saturday, said July 9 that Scrubby and Lloyd’s burger sauce was made by adding “a large spoonful of the sweet-pickle relish to about a quart of mayo.”

His wife, Marilyn Pettenger, said the burgers included lettuce and tomato.

There was no recipe for the burger patties, their son Ethan Pettenger said. It was just freshly ground beef.

The special taste that has evoked so many memories probably evolved from decades of the burgers being cooked on the same flattop grill, he said, adding that, even with regular scrubbing, some flavors surely remained.

Scrubby and Lloyd’s other recipes may be lost to history, he said, although his dad is trying to remember and record them.

“I’ve been trying for years to get the right recipe for the (chili) beans,” Pettenger said.

Pettenger family misses downtown eatery too

According to Sylvester, Scrubby and Lloyd’s was “fun and (had a) friendly small-town atmosphere.

At Scrubby and Lloyd’s, ”Everyone was a friend, not just a customer,” Sylvester wrote in a July 10 email. “Everything was made with love. The burgers were made special for each person, (and) the jukebox playing made it a fun and unique environment. Friendly people made you feel welcome.”

Marilyn Pettenger, who worked at Scrubby and Lloyd’s with husband Lee Pettenger, said their four sons started out washing dishes at the burger joint, just as their dad had done.

Jon Pettenger, the eldest, eventually took on other chores, Marilyn Pettenger said, as did Ethan Pettenger.

“Jon painted the building yellow … taxicab yellow or the color of the stripe down the highway!” she recalled.

A driver accidentally turned Scrubby and Lloyd’s into a drive-in in 1979 after they “missed the turn onto Carmel from Higuera and went through the wall,” Marilyn Pettenger said, “Jon helped Dan O’Donnell rebuild” the burger place.

In the process of that renovation, she said with a laugh, “We got a take-out window!”

She also recalled something that amused many of their customers: Marilyn and Lee Pettenger are vegetarians.

“We’d take a break for lunch and always have a grilled cheese sandwich!” she said. “Then Lee added garden burgers to the menu.”

Sadly, financial troubles forced Scrubby and Lloyd’s to close right before Halloween in 1998.

“We owed more (on the mortgage) than we did originally,” an emotional Lee Pettenger told The Tribune in 1998. “For a lot of customers, it’s (been) a home away from home.”

Scrubby and Lloyd’s and its predecessors in the Pettengers’ burger dynasty are gone now, despite fans’ devotion to them.

The little yellow building that once housed Scrubby and Lloyd’s was replaced by offices for alternative weekly newspaper New Times . That building at 505 Higuera St. sold and is now occupied by United Staffing.

“It would be such an honor if the Pettengers could open another (burger restaurant), but it’s just too expensive,” Elaine Pettenger Sylvester wrote. “If we had the means, we would open it again and run it as a family … to continue the Pettenger family legacy.”