What’s Shaking in Baker? New Owner at Bun Boy

At the Bun Boy diner in the Mojave Desert town of Baker, you can measure the blistering heat with the world’s biggest thermometer, then cool off with what some consider the world’s best strawberry shake.

For nearly three-quarters of a century, Baker has been home to the family-run Bun Boy restaurant and, more recently, its towering thermometer, landmarks on Interstate 15 well known to any Las Vegas road tripper.

But last month Bun Boy’s ailing owner sold the property to a former Burger King franchisee, leaving many a highway traveler wondering if the famous pit stop might soon be a graveyard for yet another symbol of California’s car culture. The answer is an emphatic no, according to Steve Carter, a Baker businessman and the restaurant’s new owner.

“You know how they say, ‘If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it?’ ” Carter said. “Well, we feel it isn’t broken.”

In many ways, Bun Boy is Baker, an unincorporated town 180 miles east of Los Angeles with a population of about 400. For decades the diner was the main roadside attraction among a handful of businesses on the lonely gravel stretch just off the highway. But by the late 1990s, Baker had begun to boom and Bun Boy found itself having to compete with new, better-known restaurant franchises.

But new owner Carter says the 134-foot-tall thermometer will stay, as will the famous shakes and the pudgy, hamburger-wielding Bun Boy mascot that’s been around since the 1950s.

Willis Herron, the former owner, said that’s exactly what he intended.

“I had offers from larger corporations,” Herron said. “But I imagine they would have changed the name real quick and turned it into a McDonald’s or something else.”

The 76-year-old Herron decided to sell out recently when he learned he needed triple-bypass heart surgery. He wanted to hand off his modest Baker empire--the 256-seat Bun Boy, two motels, a gas station, a convenience store known as the winningest Lotto outlet in California and 110 acres of land--to someone he could trust.

Carter has been Herron’s friend for nearly 20 years. He already owns several of the 30 businesses in Baker. Now he is aiming to build homes and bring in more retail business.

The sale to Carter is the first time the restaurant, which opened in 1926, has completely changed ownership. (Herron entered a partnership with Bun Boy’s original owner in the ‘50s.) Neither Herron nor Carter would disclose the selling price.

“I feel I helped build a small community through the years,” Herron said. “I think he’ll continue and build on it.”

Carter brought franchise fast food such as Arby’s and Burger King to Baker, and he maintains that the San Bernardino County community, as a way station en route to booming Las Vegas, can accommodate all types of restaurants and retail operations.

Business in Baker has grown 10% to 12% annually in recent years. And the state Department of Transportation says that 10.5 million vehicles passed by the town on Interstate 15 in 1998, 3 million more than just a decade earlier.

Bun Boy’s near-cult status doesn’t hurt, either. Restaurant paraphernalia sells on Internet auction sites, and out-of-town radio stations often call the diner in the dead of winter, asking for a reading from the giant thermometer outside.

The obelisk is clearly visible to drivers on the busy interstate and, since its completion in 1991, Herron says business has grown 30%. Bun Boy now serves about 1,400 customers a day.

Those are mighty numbers for the once-humble diner, which has managed to grow right along with the increasing volume of traffic whizzing past on the interstate. At one time, Herron’s enterprises employed about half of Baker’s population.

And as Bun Boy has prospered, so has Baker. In recent years, the ramshackle motor homes and houses near the restaurant along Baker Boulevard have begun to resemble a small town, which brings Herron great satisfaction.

“I saw my employees raise their children there,” he says. “Then their children went to work for us. And one of these days, they’ll own business up and down the boulevard.”