Bethel Park resident retires after 48 years with Eat’n Park
Watch reruns of “Happy Days,” and if it’s not the one with Fonzie waterskiing over a shark, you’re likely to see a beloved staple of ’50s-type nostalgia:
The carhop.
Yes, women wearing hats and bearing trays, sometimes rolling on skates, once brought lunch and dinner to customers’ cars. That’s pretty much how Eat’n Park Restaurant got its name, marketed 70 years ago as “Pittsburgh’s first modern eat-in-your-car food service.”
Eat’n Park carhops still were doing their thing through 1971, the year Jeffrey Dean got his first job with the chain, at “Old No. 1” on Saw Mill Run Boulevard. He ended up staying for nearly half a century.
Of course, he worked at other Eat’n Parks along the way: 22 of them, some having since been relegated just to memory.
That’s kind of the case for the Route 88 location in Bethel Park, which was a completely different building when Dean started as general manager there 15 years ago. The restaurant underwent demolition, new construction and reopening in 2015, with Dean seeing the project through at what turned out to be the final stop on his Eat’n Park journey.
He now is ready to enjoy retirement, having purchased a fishing boat and gotten his golf clubs ready for the spring, 48 years after punching his first time card.
“I was a cook, dishwasher, butcher, everything. We did everything,” he recalled. “Back then, it was a different type of job. We made our own hamburgers in the restaurant, and the menu was much smaller. A lot of it was to go, probably 80 percent to go and 20 percent in-house.”
As a matter of fact, Eat’n Park wouldn’t open its first full-sized restaurant until 1973, and now-ubiquitous features such as salad bars and even the Smiley Cookie were well into the future.
“It’s crazy how many changes I’ve seen, but Eat’n Park was always committed when they went into something that they were going to do it a hundred percent and do it right,” the Carrick native and Bethel Park resident said. “That’s why we kept up with the competition and surpassed them, because we did things differently. And our employees stuck with us during all those changes, which some of them were pretty stressful at times, I’m sure.”
He’s far from the only Eat’n Parker with a long company career. For example, his successor as Bethel Park general manager, Donald Sypolt, has put in 33 years so far.
As a matter of fact, Dean gave Sypolt his first job, right there in Bethel Park, where his aunt was working at the time.
“She brought me in, and Jeff hired me when I was a 17-year-old kid. I drove him nuts when I was young,” Sypolt joked. “You know, I was a normal 17-year-old boy who got to have a little freedom for the first time ever.”
They worked together on Route 88 for about five years before Sypolt started his own Eat’n Park tour, and they were reunited for a while back in the ’90s at the South Hills Village location.
Sypolt – his wife, Dorrieann, also is a 33-year company veteran – still knows plenty of people at his original spot, as at least a dozen employees have worked there for a quarter of a century or more.
“When you go to a new place and you don’t know anybody, it makes it kind of tough. I was actually walking in to some familiar faces, which made it really nice,” he said about taking over as general manager. “Plus Jeff’s got the ship running pretty well, so it wasn’t too hard coming in here.”
Dean can take pride in that and also his restaurant’s helping numerous local causes over the years.
“I donated to pretty much any organization in Bethel Park at any given time, because we’re always thankful for their business,” he said. “At the same time, we like to give back to the community. That makes me feel more a part of the community, as well.”