Fran's Restaurant, Toronto

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Fran's Restaurant is an historic chain of restaurants in Toronto, Canada.

The flagship store was opened in 1940 by Fran Deck near the intersection of St. Clair Avenue West and Yonge Street. Fran's originally had only ten seats, but later expanded to a small chain of restaurants in Toronto, including locations at Yonge Street and College Street, and Yonge Street and Eglinton Avenue.

Deck died in 1977 in a car accident, and the business was continued by his family.

In the 1990s, the family-owned chain was sold to a group of investors who intended to expand the chain throughout the Greater Toronto Area. In the late 1990s, Fran's Restaurant was sold to a business man from Calgary. The College and Yonge restaurant was purchased as a separate enterprise, while the other locations (one in Hamilton and the Yonge and St. Clair location) went bankrupt.

Since the collapse of the chain, the new owners decided to reinvent Fran's Restaurant, while maintaining the integrity of the institution's history. With the College location as inspiration, In 2004, a second location at Victoria Street and Shuter Street near Yonge Street was opened. The most recent location opened in Barrie, Ontario in late 2006 and is currently operating at full capacity.

Fran's was a constant haunt of pianist Glenn Gould. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation profile of Gould notes:

"Sometime between two and three every morning Gould would go to Fran's, a 24-hour diner a block away from his Toronto apartment, sit in the same booth and order the same meal of scrambled eggs." (Source: CBC)

[edit] Reference

• DON DOULOFF. FRAN'S STAYS THE COURSE. Review. Retrieved on 2007-19-01.

[1] Official Fran's Restaurant Web Site