In late 2023, Michael and Gloria Hall, then-owners of
Powers Hamburgers, announced
they were looking to sell the business they had owned for over two decades. They were ready to step away from the fast-paced environment of the restaurant and retire.
But they weren’t willing to sell this particular business to just anyone.
Powers Hamburgers on Harrison Street is the last remaining relic of the once-popular, regional burger dynasty started by the Powers brothers in 1935. The Halls said they were prepared to wait for the perfect buyer, who would respect the restaurant's long history
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Rachel Von Art LLCThe new owners had a replica of the store's classic neon sign made.By April of 2024,
the Halls confirmed they had found their buyers– Salvatori’s Hospitality Group and Alex Richardson. Both Salvatori’s Hospitality Group and Richardson had separately made offers, as had several others, but they opted to band together and created a joint offer, which Richardson calls a “mutually beneficial endeavor.” Salvatori’s Hospitality Group operates numerous eateries throughout the region and Richardson holds over 20 years of experience in the restaurant industry.
“We all have our different backgrounds and we bring something to the table,” Richardson says. “That’s what made it work really, really well.”
Richardson and his partners knew Powers Hamburgers had a dedicated community of supporters, who appreciated the history of the restaurant. They decided it was in the best interest of the business to not make any major changes to the menu, building, or business.
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Rachel Von Art LLCA customer puts mustard on a hamburger at Powers.“This is an icon of Fort Wayne…We’ve tried to keep everything as much the same as possible,” Richardson told Input Fort Wayne during an interview in early June. “The chili and coney sauce recipes were handwritten by Leo Powers himself, so we have those. It is the original and we confirmed with the Powers family.”
The new owners took it upon themselves to meet with the Powers family to better understand the history of the business and its founders. Richardson says they use what they learned from the Powers family as a guide for making decisions about the business, often asking what Leo Powers, the original owner of the Fort Wayne location, would do with the business if he were around today.
“We’ve continued to talk with the Powers family throughout this process,” Richardson explains. “What would the business look like today if the Powers family were still running it? If Leo Powers was still there, if Roland was still here to run things, what would it look like? I think that’s kind of been our mindset. We don’t want to change recipes. We have the same suppliers. We want to be true to what the menu and the product has been.”
As any new business owner might, the new ownership team did have big ideas for the future of Powers, like expanding hours, adding online ordering, and even potentially opening up more Powers locations across Fort Wayne. However, they knew it was important to maintain the legacy of the business and be strategic about implementing those concepts, so they started with smaller changes, like restoring the stools at the countertops, adding a fresh coat of paint, and switching to LED lighting.
Part of adapting as a new business owner is also listening to customer feedback. Richardson says immediate feedback involved the lingering smell of onions, which is a trademark of entering the Powers restaurant, and the lack of fries on the menu. As of early June, Richardson says there were points he was hopeful they’d be able to address down the road.
On June 25, Powers Hamburgers caught fire, immediately throwing a wrench in any sort of plans new ownership had in mind. Richardson says the momentum built in the frenzied first two months of owning the restaurant was almost put at a complete standstill.
At 1 a.m., he received the call– someone passing by had noticed the fire and called 911. He raced to the restaurant to see the damage. While the fire remained mostly confined to a small area inside the building, the lingering smoke caused more damage than anything else.
“They’re heroes for stopping and saving it,” Richardson says. “The whole building could have been lost otherwise.”
Investigators later found that the fire was the result of an exposed wire that ran from the wall behind the grill to a light under the hood above the grill, which sparked and likely smoldered all day before finally catching fire. Richardson says they weren’t even aware of that light or the wire that ran to it, as it had stopped working years ago.
“It’s unfortunate, obviously, but at that point what was done was done,” Richardson says.
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Rachel Von Art LLCAmber Doan talks to customers at Powers.He and his partners from Salvatori’s Hospitality Group immediately went to work coming up with solutions.
“The next day we started planning right away,” Richardson says. “I think the biggest thing for us was– what’s our team going to do? We had a team of 12 people and they depend on us to be open for jobs.”
With a bit of problem-solving and some community support, they found not one, but two solutions. First, AMCE by Full Circle offered up the use of their food truck, which was set up in the parking lot of Powers Hamburgers to help customers get their slider fix. Then, leaders at the Union Street Market reached out to let Richardson know they had a space available. A week later, Powers Hamburgers opened on the Electric Works campus and helped the historic restaurant reach a new audience.
Richardson says it’s not a common situation, but they were fortunate to have those two opportunities. Usually, business owners in this situation are stuck renovating their buildings with no way to continue daily operations.
With the employees taken care of and the building momentum back on track, ownership was able to focus their attention on the building, which Richardson says had gone 85 years without a formal remodel.
“Over the years they would patch a thing here or there, but we knew that it needed an update at some point and this kind of became the time for us to go ahead and do that,” he explains. “We ideally wanted to wait a few years but we knew it needed some updating.”
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Rachel Von Art LLCDeJour Hall, left, and Jovone Wright work to get orders out at Powers Hamburgers.They updated a lot of their equipment, like the hood over the grill, which will allow for better ventilation and thus help take away that prominent onion smell Powers Hamburgers is known for. He says they’ve also taken to slicing onions before they open to help alleviate the lingering smell. Richardson cautions the smell won’t be gone entirely– a potential positive or negative depending on how one feels about the distinct scent.
If you happen to be in the crowd that despises the onion smell, or you’ve avoided the burger shack for its reputation of that very scent, the new owners added in a walkup window during renovations, which allows patrons to place an order online and pick it up without ever entering the restaurant. Richardson says this feature and the new outdoor seating area will help alleviate crowding in the small space.
“Sometimes if you’ve eaten at Powers, you’re sitting there eating and you’ve got six people waiting over your shoulder, watching you eat, salivating because they’re waiting on their sack of burgers to go,” he explains. “Being able to take that crowd outside to the walkup window– it’s less crowded for our guests that are choosing to dine in with us.”
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Rachel Von Art LLCThe recent renovations allowed for a pickup window to be installed at Powers Hamburgers.The walkup window also serves as a point of contact for delivery orders and all orders during late hours, creating a more secure environment for the employees working those late shifts.
Adding the window and more space for workers behind the counter resulted in the loss of a few stools at the counter, but Richardson bargains it’s a fair tradeoff as the space was not originally built to accommodate the amount of business they do in the present day.
They also took the opportunity to add a fryer to their equipment lineup and permanently add fries to the menu. They ran testing for four different fry options and gathered feedback on those options at their temporary locations and online polls. (They landed on a shoestring french fry.)
“A burger and fries– what’s more iconic, more American than a burger and fries, right?” Richardson propositions. “For 80 years, people have asked for french fries here and now we can say yes.”
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Rachel Von Art LLCNew ownership heard feedback that customers had been waiting years to see fries added to the menu.Other details done or redone during the renovations are callbacks to the original state of the restaurant, like the bright red counter and the small hexagon flooring– a notably more expensive and time-consuming choice for the sake of nostalgia and honoring the history.
In collaboration with the Powers family, they’ve also added a small blurb about the restaurant's storied history on the wall, alongside memorabilia from the family.
Richardson notes the heavy glass front door is now gone after being broken by the firefighters entering during the emergency, but pieces of that door will be memorized on the wall. He says they looked into recreating the original door, but to be more accessible and safe, ownership opted to invest in a new, mostly glass door.
As a sort of final crown jewel on the renovations, Richardson also had the exterior neon sign remade. For almost a decade it’s been out of commission and irreparable, but he recalls photos from the 80s and 90s of the burger shack with the neon sign lit up. It too is an important aspect of the small restaurant's legacy.
“I think it’s so cool because in the 40s when this was built, this was the first sign people would see when they get off the train station, which a lot of people traveled to town by train,” Richardson says.
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Rachel Von Art LLCWhile the train station is no longer there, Powers is just down the street from the bus station and Parkview Field, which results in what Richardson calls a “community melting pot.”
“We love that we’re right here in the heart of it,” he says. “You have people that live down here and you have people that work down here all coming together and it’s amazing to see just who walks up to the counter that day. Sometimes it might be the mayor and her husband. Sometimes it’s a council member or a lawyer. Sometimes it’s somebody hoping off the bus that just has enough money in their pocket for one cheeseburger.”
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Rachel Von Art LLCCustomers David, left, and Denny Lough eat at the only booth table at Powers Hamburgers on Harrison Street.Powers Hamburgers shut down their parking lot food truck service and Union Street Market location as they reopened the restaurant in mid-October, with customers anxious to return and see what this new chapter of Powers Hamburgers holds. Richardson says it’s the same iconic slider they’ve always been known for, at the same affordable price they’re known for, with an extra side of friendly service and french fries.
“I would encourage folks to come down here and see what we’ve done with the place,” he says. “We’ve been able to keep this historic landmark that is a part of Fort Wayne as anything and make it even better. Our goal was just to really make this a place that Fort Wayne can be proud of. This is a place that is as Fort Wayne as Coney Island or The Embassy or Parkview Field.”
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