50 years

on the hill
By Frank Ruggiero
ruggiero@wataugademocrat.com

Consider the Snackburger.

The Hilltop Drive-In’s whole beef patty smothered with chili and coleslaw, topped with tomato and served on a warm bun is the kind of old-fashioned recipe patrons have praised for half a century.

“The Snackburger is the best burger that’s ever been,” said Harold Coffey, writer of the recipe and former owner of the Hilltop, which celebrates its 50th anniversary this year.

Coffey may be somewhat biased, but with good reason. He owned the Hilltop for 50 years and remembers when the drive-in, located on U.S. 421 near the intersection of George Wilson Road in Boone, used to be a snack bar and a gas station.

Many of its patrons bear similar memories, and the building’s façade harkens back to days of yesteryear, with neon lights lining the large Snackburger and ice cream cone on its sign.

The Hilltop is not so much a drive-in anymore as it is a walk-in – a sliding window is located outside for take-out orders (with a large menu board on the wall to help), and owner Karen Coffey Wood and server Belinda Patten invite folks – especially hungry ones – to dine inside.

They’ll find a menu chock full of burgers, sandwiches, salads, plentiful side items, a list of ice cream and homemade milkshakes, as well as other classic diner fare.

“My dad always told me, ‘Don’t serve anything unless you’d eat it yourself,’” said Wood, Coffey’s daughter, adding that each meal is made to order. “That’s the problem with a lot of new places – they don’t put any love into it, and my father always told me, ‘If you don’t love your customers, then you don’t deserve them.’”

For Wood, Coffey’s daughter, the Hilltop is a home away from home, and customers become family. Custom orders are customary, like the oyster sandwich requested by one patron. Wood remembers another time when a diner brought an oatmeal cake and asked for a milkshake to accompany it. Another brought bananas for the same reason.

But the Hilltop wasn’t always the family-friendly establishment it is today. When Coffey purchased the it in 1958, it was more of a rough, tough and frequently violent drinking spot. Coffey remembers being “scared to death” of the place when he was seven or eight years old, back when the drive-in was called the Hilltop Snack Bar, attached to a gas station.

“Nobody had ever stayed in business before I went in there,” he said. “They’d stay a little while and then go out of business, but I just wanted to try it and I did. There was hardly anything in Boone – a few restaurants at the time and service stations, but that was just about it.”

As soon as Coffey purchased the Hilltop, he had the gas pumps removed, but a lot of the trouble remained. At the time, he was unaware the Hilltop was a popular “hangout for drunks,” but he soon found out the hard way.

“It was terrible,” Coffey said, adding that when words weren’t an effective deterrent, he’d have to resort to fists. “I had many fights – I won some and I lost some, but I probably lost more than I won. Now I can walk away from a fight, but you couldn’t then because you had no place to go, so it was either fight or be run off, and I was stubborn.”

Coffey and bouncer Joe Cornell finally tamed the drive-In in the 1960s, but things got worse before they got better, and Wood remembers that staff would call an ambulance instead of the police when trouble would rise.

“He got it cleaned out, and it became the hangout for the teenagers,” Wood said, likening it to Al’s Diner of “Happy Days” fame.

Coffey felt a clean slate was needed, so the old building was torn down in 1966 and the current one built. The locally-famous sign is the same from that time, and old patrons remember the Hilltop’s “curb-hopping” service, though Coffey said there were never any roller skates involved.

“We never had roller skates, and I’ve heard that so many times that [people] saw girls on skates, but that’s not so,” he said. “We never got it paved until we built the new building in ’66, and you couldn’t do that on gravel.”

But according to Coffey, it wasn’t how the food was served that brought repeat business, but rather who served it.

“If I liked you, you’d want to come back because I was good to you,” Coffey said. “That’s how I built it up, and I did have a great business. We had them lined up out the door, parked across the street, and I’d even walk across the highway to give them curb service. You would’ve expected a good tip for that, but the tips weren’t many.”

During the ’60s, the Hilltop’s burgers sold for 20 cents and hot dogs for 15, meaning a diner could get a burger, dog, an order of fries and a drink for less than a dollar.

“I sold a cup of coffee for a nickel,” Coffey said. “We ate out not a long time ago, and a cup of coffee was $2.19.”

Eventually, the Hilltop stopped curb-hopping, Coffey said, since servers had to make up to four trips to one car, which would wear them down. However, he found the pick-up window was an excellent substitute.

Coffey involved his family in the restaurant’s day-to-day operations, and Wood does the same today. Wood recalls growing up in the Hilltop with her brother, Tony Coffey, and sister, Donna Coffey Presnell, and customers still remember when she was but a little girl with pigtails. Her mother, Nancy, though now divorced from Coffey, still visits for lunch and a stroll down Memory Lane.

“When I was little here, I just remember a family restaurant where everybody knew everybody,” Wood said. “Mom can remember when we were babies, one of us would be crying and a customer would take care of us while she worked.”

Wood’s children – Nikos and Nicole Vamvaketis and Westen Harold Wood – now spend time at the Hilltop, and Coffey’s glad to see them develop a healthy work ethic. He also hopes his grandchildren will learn how to make a proper Snackburger.

“It’s kept me going,” Coffey said of the burger. “People would come just to get the Snackburger. I had closed one time, and there were these people who came from Florida to stay the whole summer, and they were beating on the door, saying they had broken the speed limit from Brunswick, Ga. all the way to Boone to get here, and I had been closed nearly a half hour. Of course, you know, I opened back up for them.”

When it comes to customer service, Coffey said it’s the little things – most of which do not cost a penny – that go the longest way. “You’re not through with [a customer] until he walks through the door and you’ve invited him to come back,” he said.

One of the few negatives Coffey could find with the whole business is losing a customer.

“It hurts when a good friend and customer dies,” he said. “That always hurt the most, and I’ve experienced that. I’ve had people come by and tell me ‘bye,’ knowing they only had a few days left, and it hurts.”

But the Hilltop has its regulars, old and new, hailing from throughout Watauga, Avery, and Wilkes counties and even Tennessee.

“If I got you one time and liked you, I tried my best to keep you,” Coffey said.

Coffey still owns the property, but Wood now owns the business.

And apart from a larger menu, the digital jukebox and modern video games, everything inside remains practically the same as it has been throughout the decades.

“There’s a lot of history here,” Wood said. “A lot of people come by to celebrate their anniversary, because this is where they first met.”

And chances are it was over a Snackburger.

The Hilltop Drive-In is located at 2530 U.S. 421 North in Boone and is open Monday through Saturday. For more information, call (828) 297-2621.