‘Iconic’ Luncheonette At Zale ClosedNo longer will people be able to get a home-cooked meal and talk about local gossip while picking up their prescriptions. Zale Drugs’ “iconic” luncheonette counter is closed.
“I just knew. I just knew that was gonna happen,” Gene Zale, who owned the business for 40 years, said of the closure. “That fountain was just the backbone of the business. It brought me over 400, sometimes 600 people a day on the fountain. It was a meeting place for people. It was a fun place to get together and have some conversation and a good meal.”
Zale bought the business at 1775 E. Center St., Warsaw, in 1970 from Judd Drugs, a small chain of six drug stores that Zale had worked for. Zale sold his business in 2009 to one of his pharmacist employees, Becky Shroyer.
HomeTown Pharmacy, a Michigan-based company with over 36 pharmacies in Michigan, bought the business in 2015.
Zale blames that on the federal government.
“The federal government would not give her the same licenses that I had pertaining to the pharmaceutical side,” Zale said. “She could not fill Medicaid prescriptions, they just wouldn’t give her the license because big pharma and big chains just were in cahoots with the government, and they wouldn’t give her the time of day, and it’s sad, because that forced her out. She had to sell the business because she couldn’t get what she needed to run it properly, and this is all gonna be put together and I’m sending it to President Trump. I’ve got every pharmacy that is a compounding pharmacy interested in doing this – in telling the federal government how bad the federal government was for the small independent pharmacies. They destroyed them in Indiana and every other state, and this is gonna be presented to President Trump before this new election.”
Zale said when he started in ’71, there was probably in the neighborhood of about 1,000 to 1,500 independent pharmacies.
“Now you could count them on two hands,” he said.
Zale Drugs, a compounding pharmacy, has the ability to get pure chemicals that tweak the prescriptions for a patient for whatever particulars may be involved.
“When I started, I started making chap sticks for fever blisters, and there was none on the market,” Zale said. “I would go visit doctors and tell them and they’d come see and have lunch with me and then go back and start writing prescriptions. Well, big pharma hated us. They hated us for taking this business away from them, and therefore they do everything they can do to squash us.”
Brett Beachum, director of retail operations for HomeTown Pharmacy, said the company “made the difficult decision to permanently close our luncheonette effective April 6. We’d like to say thank you to all the luncheonette customers for the many years of serving our community.”
Beachum also said a remodel of the pharmacy will include expanding services that include a new hormone replacement therapy office, additional rooms for vaccinations and pharmacist counseling, widening the pharmacy area, installing a clean-air compounding room and a new drive-thru window service.
“I am sad to see it happen, but unless you have somebody in there managing the operation and talking with every person that’s coming in, sitting down at the fountain and talking with them, it’s just not gonna be a success. You can’t run it from an office in Michigan, you have to be there everyday with it,” Zale said.
For the “regulars” who patronized the lunch counter, the closure is a big loss.
Jerry Opperud was a familiar face at the counter for breakfast and lunch, nearly daily.
“I think what they’re missing is an understanding for how significant that luncheonette is, not only to those of us like myself that eat there frequently, but for so many that have gone there for so long, and I’m talking about years,” Opperud said of HomeTown Pharmacy. “I don’t have the answers, but I have only the general feeling of what it meant to this community for so long and it was iconic, it was a focal point of knowledge, conversation and good will. That’s a value you can’t replace.”
Cindy Dobbins said going to the counter was a family tradition and that it started with her mother taking her there, and she would go with her grandkids.
Mayor Joe Thallemer began going there for lunch when he owned his optometry practice across the street.
“The last time I went in and had lunch I looked over at the pharmacist and thought, oh gosh, I need a flu shot, so I had a flu shot and I finished my lunch,” Thallemer said. “It was just one of those very unique treasures that we had in this community that we just kind of take those things for granted.”
For Jo Lemon, who’s lived in Warsaw for 53 years, she began taking her three children there. She went every two weeks for lunch and said the vegetable soup would have won any award.
“I always saw someone I knew. It was a place where it didn’t matter what day you went, you would always recognize where you knew you were a regular, and you don’t find a lot of places you find a regular, but at Zale’s, you did,” Lemon said. “Everybody feels the same when they get there, everybody feels on the same level, everybody’s hungry. It’s one of those historic things that it’s a big loss.”
Lincoln Elementary School kindergarten teacher Carla Milliman has become a regular over the last 32 years she’s been eating there, so much so she and the fellow teachers have the backdoor employee entrance passcode.
“I’ve been going there as long as I’ve been teaching, 32 years,” Milliman said of walking across the street from the school to the back door. “Then they got robbed a couple times because they used to just have a screen door and we’d come in through the screen door, but then after they got robbed they had to put a code on the door and they were afraid the teachers wouldn’t come over anymore if we had to go around the building so they gave us the code so we could still come and go. It was a great reward for me to use with the kids to just walk over and have lunch with them and take them back. I’m really sad it’s closing.”
Brian Peterson’s real estate business is also right down the road and he’s been a regular customer at the luncheonette for more a decade.
“It was very convenient for me and a good place to go and see people and hang out and talk about the happenings in the community and what’s going on in the world,” Peterson said. “It’s been a staple in our community for a long time. There’s several good lunch places in town, but that place was unique. It was kind of like going back in time, and it was kind of nice.”
