I totally missed out on what might have been the coolest thing to happen in Conway this month! It all started this evening I was in my office working late when I started getting text messages from friends asking me if Ryan Mallett was really at our Wimpy’s Conway location. Of course I instinctively said no, why would he be, but then I thought to pull up Twitter and sure enough, I saw this tweet:

Should I do a contest for free food Wimpy’s?
— Ryan Mallett (@Ryan_Mallett_15) April 13, 2012

I immediately called the restaurant to see what the story was from the staff and they informed me that they really didn’t realize who he was until he had already left. They went on to tell me that he picked up the check for several people that showed up at the restaurant after he announced that he was there. Keep in mind we had no clue that he was coming, this came totally out of the blue…

We’ve posted some photos from his visit on our Facebook page, you can also find them thumbnailed below:

By Curt Hodges

Jonesboro — For 80 years in newspaper comics and for decades in cartoons, J. Wellington Wimpy from “Popeye” has been telling people, “I’ll gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today.”

Northeast Arkansas residents will soon be able to get the hamburger of Wimpy’s dreams, said Todd Gambil, manager of the soon-to-be-opened Wimpy’s Burgers and Fries, 2610 Stadium Blvd., between Ridout Lumber and LongHorn Steakhouse. The new restaurant is set to open in early February, he said.

Wimpy’s Burgers & Fries is a new franchise owned by Fred and Cliff Mehler of Southaven and Olive Branch, Mississippi, which has its pilot restaurant in Southaven and another in Conway. The Jonesboro restaurant will be the third — but not the last, said Fred Mehler, who has been hands-on in converting the former used car facility into a restaurant.

“We found the location we wanted but not the building that we wanted,” Mehler said. So with the help of an architect and Mehler’s own talents, the used car lot office building is being changed to suit the needs of food service.

“It’s going to be great, I promise that,” Gambill said. “We’re a short chain working to become a long chain.”

Gambill, who grew up at Brookland and graduated from Jonesboro High School, said he has extensive experience in restaurants, including fast food. “I’m culinary by trade and have done every job in a restaurant,” the manager said.

There will be seating for more than 90, Gambill said, with comfortable, inviting decor Mehler himself has designed and is creating.

Galvanized tin roofing sheets and decorative pressed tin have become exquisite wall coverings after being stained to look like oil-rubbed copper and brass. Stained wood and bright colors cover the walls and cabinets, and a black ceiling hides recessed lighting that contrasts with two large ceiling fans.

“We will have a combination of booths and table seating,” Gambill said.

Wimpy’s will feature fresh, never frozen hamburger meat and Wimpy’s challenge, a 4-pound burger with a pound of french fries and a 24oz milkshake that will be free if consumed within one hour. He said a student at the University of Central Arkansas at one at the Conway restaurant in 27 minutes, so “the gauntlet has been thrown down.”

Despite the name, Wimpy’s is not just hamburgers and fries, Gambill said. The restaurant serves Philly steak and Philly chicken steak sandwiches, grilled chicken, salads, chicken strips and popcorn chicken for the kids.

“We make our own battered and fried pickles,” he said. The restaurant also features “bats and balls,” which are breaded and fried Monterey cheese “bats and cheddar balls as appetizers. There are also french fried sweet potato sticks.

“We consider ourselves ‘quick service,’ not fast food,” Gambill said.”Nothing is started until an order is placed, so if you order at the drive-through, you may have to wait a few minutes.”

The restaurant also has it’s own sourdough buns, which are lightly toasted before served. They even mix their own ranch, honey mustard and other sauces, he said.
With more than 20 toppings for their burgers, Gambill said customers can literally make a meal in a bun if they desire.

Each patty is 5.5oz, and burgers are available as single, double, and triple patties.

The restaurant will feature senior citizen discounts, beginning at age 55. ASU students with student identification, will receive 40% off their meal costs after 5pm each Tuesday.

The modern dietary regimen known as the paleolithic diet (abbreviated paleo diet or paleodiet), also popularly referred to as the caveman diet, Stone Age diet and hunter-gatherer diet, is a nutritional plan based on the presumed ancient diet of wild plants and animals that various hominid species habitually consumed during the Paleolithic era—a period of about 2.5 million years duration that ended around 10,000 years ago with the development of agriculture. In common usage, such terms as the “Paleolithic diet” also refer to the actual ancestral human diet. Centered on commonly available modern foods, the “contemporary” Paleolithic diet consists mainly of fish, grass-fed pasture raised meats, vegetables, fruit, roots, and nuts, and excludes grains, legumes, dairy products, salt, refined sugar, and processed oils.

First popularized in the mid-1970s by gastroenterologist Walter L. Voegtlin, this nutritional concept has been promoted and adapted by a number of authors and researchers in several books and academic journals. A common theme in evolutionary medicine, Paleolithic nutrition is based on the premise that modern humans are genetically adapted to the diet of their Paleolithic ancestors and that human genetics have scarcely changed since the dawn of agriculture, and therefore that an ideal diet for human health and well-being is one that resembles this ancestral diet. Proponents of this diet argue that modern human populations subsisting on traditional diets allegedly similar to those of Paleolithic hunter-gatherers are largely free of diseases of affluence, and that two small prospective studies of the Paleolithic diet in humans have shown some positive health outcomes. Supporters point to several potentially therapeutic nutritional characteristics of allegedly preagricultural diets.

In all honesty, we are totally open to new things at Wimpy’s. However, not knowing a lot about this diet we are going to need your help, what menu options would you like to see us add? Since our beef is never frozen and comes fresh from the farm more or less, could our hamburger patties be wrapped in a lettuce wrap alongside your favorite condiments?

If you have some suggestions, please don’t hesitate to drop us a suggestion below…

Honestly, we also like to go through and pick random friends on Facebook and Twitter and surprise them by hooking them up w/ free food so be sure to connect to us on both networks. Also, please help us spread the word, share Wimpy’s Jonesboro w/ your friends!!!

Our free food Facebook winners so far are:

1. Alison Snyder Cradduck
2. Tiffany Taber
3. Kotton Guest
4. Christina Bradway
5. Heather Sims Mcminn
6. Shannon Pope
7. Kara Moore
8. Stacy Murry
9. Sherry Whitlow
10. Josh Brown
11. Debbie Reynolds Spargo

Our Twitter Free Food Winners Are:

1. @jgmcpherson
2. @chrisnance34
3. @jprogers23
4. @paul_mcanally
5. @jedbicker
6. @adamhambrick
7. @mackmaupinjr

Last month we were needing some high resolution photos of our combo meals for a project we are working on in Conway. I snapped these shots with my Pentax K100d SLR camera and have never claimed to be a professional photographer but I am pretty proud of how these turned out, especially since I can’t look at them very long without getting hungry!!!