Last April I had a chance to eat at the Burgerville in Vancouver, WA. I’d been wanting to go, Burgerville was described as being to the Pacific Northwest what Inn-N-Out Burger is to Southern California and I wasn’t disappointed at all. A damn fine hamburger that could stand proudly to the cherry pie at the Double R Diner in Twin Peaks.
A great burger chain needs a cranky, iconoclastic founder and Burgerville founder George Propstra (who just died last week) was no exception.
Propstra retired from the company more than a decade ago, but he never really left. He was regarded as Burgerville’s best customer and toughest critic. The day before he died, he was working out details for a bakery he planned to open next year in downtown Vancouver, The Oregonian reported.
Propstra opened the first Burgerville USA restaurant in Vancouver. He steadily expanded the operation into a 39-restaurant chain with 1,600 employees.
The belief in supporting his neighbors turned out to be good business, eventually causing Burgerville to be best known for its seasonal fruit milkshakes, Walla Walla sweet onion rings and Tillamook cheeseburgers.
Propstra became known to local television viewers in the 1980s, when he appeared in a pair of commercials. In one of them, he disdainfully smacked and flung a competitor’s frozen burger patty.
