What happened to the fast-food restaurants that used to be in Juneau, and why aren’t there more today?

Curious Juneau

Makenzie O’Halloran makes a sandwich at Subway in the Mendenhall Valley on Tuesday, March 12, 2024. (Clarise Larson/KTOO)

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Fast-food restaurants have come and gone from Juneau for decades — but very few stick around for long.

Beyond Subway, McDonald’s, Domino’s, Papa John’s and Papa Murphy’s, you won’t find any other national chains in the capital city. Sure, there are restaurants like Pel’meni’s or Crepe Escape downtown where you can get food fast, but that’s not what we’re talking about.

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Some residents, like Ken Judson, who was grabbing a Subway sandwich during a recent lunch hour, wish they had more choices.

“Oh you know, Taco Bell or Burger King. Arby’s,” he said. “We see the commercials, but we’re always stuck with the one McDonalds, and there used to be other stuff. I think there’s still room for more.”

He’s right — partly. Juneau once had popular chains like Taco Bell, Burger King and Wendy’s. Some even had multiple locations. But they came and went. Several Curious Juneau listeners asked KTOO why that is.

Any day of the week you can pull up to McDonald’s in Juneau and grab a Big Mac and fries. It’s right by the McNugget intersection. When it opened in 1982, corporate officials said it sold more hamburgers and fries in its first week than any other store in the company’s history.

And at one point there were two McDonald’s in Juneau. A second one opened downtown, four years after the first one, where Heritage Coffee is now. That one closed in 2010.

The former downtown McDonald’s location in Juneau. (Photo courtesy of City and Borough of Juneau)

There’s no Taco Bell in Juneau today, but once there were two of those, too. Wendy’s, Kentucky Fried Chicken, Taco Time, Burger King and Baskin Robbins — they all came and went by the mid-90s. Burger King even had a food truck, but that shut down, too.

Bruce Denton opened the Senate Building on South Franklin Street downtown in 1982 and still owns it today. Wendy’s and Burger King had locations there in the 80s.

“It’s interesting when you look historically at Juneau,” he said. “I mean, we had a Kentucky Fried Chicken for years that isn’t here anymore. We had Taco Time and a Taco Bell. McDonald’s is kind of the sole success story.”

Denton said the downtown area is tough for restaurants in general — but especially fast food — because you can’t put in a drive-thru, and there’s not enough foot traffic.

“They clearly weren’t getting enough traffic,” he said. “Particularly in the winter. And you think about the cruise ship passengers, one thing about the cruise is that they’re royally fed. So there’s not a lot of tourists that are scrambling in to eat.”

One of the few fast-food restaurants in Juneau that has passed the test of time is Subway. Its owner is Assembly member Wade Bryson.

A photo of the old Wendy’s restaurant in the Senate Building downtown where the Bear’s Lair and Juneau Artist’s Gallery now reside. (Photo courtesy of Senate Mall)

He said owning any business in Juneau is tough, but trying to make money in fast food here is like walking a razor-thin wire.

“What do you call a business without profit? You call it closed,” he said. “So, once a business doesn’t cross a profit threshold, it can’t continue to operate. It is hands-down one of the most challenging locations in the United States to operate a business.”

Bryson took over the two existing Subway restaurants in Juneau in 2004, one in the valley and one downtown. The downtown location burned down less than a year later. He opened another one in Lemon Creek in 2010, but that closed in 2015. Then he opened yet another one downtown, but closed it in 2020.

Like many businesses in Juneau, he said that fast-food restaurants deal with three big issues: inflated prices, lack of housing and a struggle to find workers. To make a profit, he said he typically needs to charge about 30% more than what a Subway sandwich would cost in the Lower 48.

“The cost of food is just escalating literally on a daily basis,” he said. “And in Alaska, the housing crisis, which led to the employment crisis, which led to the wage crisis, which has now compounded the housing crisis — I mean, it’s all just circling together.”

None of this is new. Even back in 1995, former McDonald’s owner and operator Mike White told the Juneau Empire that finding employees in Juneau was tough. Dale Martens, the former vice president of the Anchorage Taco Bell of Alaska was quoted in the story saying that staffing in Juneau “has always been a challenge.”

Bryson said the demand for fast food in Juneau hasn’t gone away, but running a restaurant in Juneau often just doesn’t pencil out.

“I wish I had a dollar for every time someone asked me to open a Taco Bell here in town — I would have had enough money to do it,” he said.

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