Milo’s Hamburgers

Milo Carlton learned to cook burgers as a mess cook in the US Army, and on 16 April 1946 he opened Milo’s Hamburger Shop in a cinder-block building in North Birmingham, Alabama. It was just a kitchen and a takeaway window: Milo worked the grill while his wife Bea made the fries and shakes, and regulars phoned ahead in the morning to reserve their burgers before they sold out. The shop moved in 1963, and in the early 1980s the family sold its first franchise to Milo and Bea’s next-door neighbour.

For fifty years the menu was burgers, fries and tea and nothing else. The burgers come drenched in a secret sauce, and the crinkle-cut fries are dusted with a bright orange seasoned salt that fans call fairy dust. The sweet tea was so popular that it became a separate business, Milo’s Tea Company, in 2002, now sold in supermarkets across the country. Fried pies arrived in 1995 and chicken tenders in 2000.

The chain is still mostly a Birmingham thing, with around twenty restaurants in Alabama, and its slogan, from a 1993 jingle, is “Everybody goes to Milo’s.” When it bottled the sauce for the first time in 2020 to raise money for a children’s food charity, ten thousand bottles sold in three weeks.

About twenty restaurants, most of them around Birmingham, Alabama.

• Little Big Burger (United States, since 2010). A tiny-menu Portland burger chain: quarter-pounders on brioche, Tillamook cheese and truffle fries. Also built on beef and cheese.
• Culver's (United States, since 1984). Wisconsin in a burger: buttered buns, cheese curds and frozen custard. Also built on beef and cheese.
• Freddy's Frozen Custard & Steakburgers (United States, since 2002). Thin, crispy steakburgers and frozen custard, named after a WWII veteran. Also built on beef and cheese.
• Smashburger (United States, since 2007). A whole chain built on pressing a ball of beef flat on a hot griddle. Also built on beef and cheese.