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This burger vendor, 87, often does have a beef

Bill Elwell, 87, doesn't want any more customers, but they just keep showing up at his tiny burger shack where Van Nuys meets Sherman Oaks. A sign above the cash register says, "This isn't Burger King. You can't have it your way."

Bill Elwell, 87, doesn’t want any more customers, but they just keep showing up at his tiny burger shack where Van Nuys meets Sherman Oaks. A sign above the cash register says, “This isn’t Burger King. You can’t have it your way.”  (Barbara Davidson / Los Angeles Times)

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Bill Elwell has been flipping burgers at his San Fernando Valley stand for 49 years. He doesn’t want any more business, but try telling his patrons that. Oh -- and don’t ask him about the mayonnaise.
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A loyal customer base

Folks love Bill’s burgers and wait for lunch on the stools lining the shack. Elwell eventually added the name of longtime friend and employee Hiroko Wilcox to the sign out front. They met at a now-closed Van Nuys bowling alley more than two decades ago.   (Barbara Davidson / Los Angeles Times)

Yes, he has beef

It’s been 49 years since Elwell took to the grill of his 10-by-20-foot burger stand on Oxnard Street. He once flipped a burger from grill to floor to shush a customer complaining about too much mayonnaise. And he’s been known to eat raw burger patties to irk anyone who says the meat isn’t done enough.   (Barbara Davidson / Los Angeles Times)

From customer to colleague

Joe Mario returns change to a lunchtime customer. Mario had been a regular customer since meeting Elwell at a nearby auto body shop in 1982 and was hired two years ago.   (Barbara Davidson / Los Angeles Times)

An off-putting mascot

Elwell has a cigar-chomping, plaid-wearing doll that he says is his “security guard,” placed out front to “bug the customers.” On this rainy day, he’s consigned to the restroom.   (Barbara Davidson / Los Angeles Times)

Nothing newfangled

Elwell’s old-time cash register takes only cash and does not spit out receipts. Wear him down enough, and he’ll admit he likes his customers -- most of them, anyway.   (Barbara Davidson / Los Angeles Times)

In business in Bill

Hiroko Wilcox, who has been working with Elwell for some 20 years, adds mayo to one of his famous burgers. “When I met him, I said, ‘He’s been married five times and I’d better stay away from him.’ And I ended up working here.”   (Barbara Davidson / Los Angeles Times)

Having it his way

Elwell cooks up burgers on his flattop cast-iron grill. His business seems to be growing, he said, because the Internet “found” him. Online reviews say his eatery is a “vanishing 1950s time capsule.”   (Barbara Davidson / Los Angeles Times)

Orders of the day

Customer orders are scribbled on a small piece of paper and hung on a nail inside the tiny kitchen. Like clockwork, the eight black stools around Elwell’s counter are full by noon.   (Barbara Davidson / Los Angeles Times)

A Valley institution

Not much has changed in Elwell’s business except who’s married to him. One of Elwell’s five ex-wives -- was she the second or third? he tries to recall -- first showed him how to maneuver in a kitchen, he said.   (Barbara Davidson / Los Angeles Times)

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