Yankee Doodle Dandy (restaurant)
Yankee Doodle Dandy was a hamburger restaurant chain started in Bensenville, Illinois in December 1966 by brothers Chris and Bill Proyce as the Yankee Doodle House. The chain had as many as 27 restaurants, 7 company owned and the rest franchised, in the Chicago area by 1976. Yankee Doodle had a restaurant on 125th and Burleigh streets in Brookfield, Wis. during the 1970s. The building had a red, white and blue motif. The restaurant had a design and menu similar to Burger Chef and Burger King. According to some sources, the chain went out of business in the early 1980s.
Starting in 1981, the Proyce family decide to withdraw from the fast food industry and refocus their efforts in casual dining restaurant and bar industry through the conversion of two of the company owned Yankee Doodles in Elmhurst and Arlington Heights into the new Bailey's Restaurant & Bar concept while closing the rest of the fast food operations. Eventually a total of four Bailey's Restaurant & Bar were opened by 1988.
