The Golden Skillet sign in Sandston (Photo by Taber Andrew Bain via Flickr)
Driving around Richmond and its surrounding counties, you may notice a certain type of signage — a big circle, several feet in diameter with a long handle jutting out that resembles a skillet. To the untrained eye, it may appear to be another fast-food advertisement, but if you know what you’re looking at, it’s an unmistakable artifact of Richmond’s culinary history.
Folks who have lived here since a certain chain’s heyday will recognize the nostalgic logo and dark brown swooping script as Golden Skillet, a Richmond-born fried chicken fast-food chain. Today, there are only a few local locations remaining. But before Golden Skillet faded to a dim glimmer, travelers worldwide flocked to the gleaming concept that grew to over 200 outposts.
The story of Golden Skillet is really the story of its late founder, Richmond native Clifton William (“C.W.”) Guthrie Sr., a born salesman with a knack for business and a secret recipe for killer fried chicken. Guthrie’s granddaughter, Mary Beth Castanien, says, “He could sell you anything, and he would.”
Before finding success in business, Guthrie raised chickens on his family farm in Halifax County. He tried his hand at tobacco farming and worked in a silk mill before studying business at a night school in Petersburg. Still searching for his calling, Guthrie entered the insurance business in 1931, the same year he married his beloved wife, Mary Brown.
Throughout his early career, Guthrie never stopped tinkering with an undisclosed recipe for his favorite food: fried chicken. When he became a traveling rep for an outdoor lighting manufacturer after World War II, Guthrie took his recipe on the road, always toting along all the ingredients and equipment he needed to fry up a batch. He would ask his clients if he could make them some fried chicken, and they almost always said yes.
Guthrie had a hunch he was onto something, not just with his batter and breading recipe, but also his cooking method, which used a pressure cooker to fry the chicken in under half the time of a typical fryer. The proprietary design, patented by Guthrie in the 1960s, became an integral factor in Golden Skillet’s growth into a worldwide franchise. But before all that, it was just Guthrie and his pressure cooker in a back room.
It was in one such back room, at the now-shuttered Richmond-born department store Thalhimers, where Guthrie got his first real break. When Thalhimers VP Newman Hamblet tasted Guthrie’s delectable fried chicken in 1963, he was such a fan that he added it to the menu at the store’s restaurant, the Richmond Room. Four years later, Thalhimers and Guthrie drew up a $70 million agreement to franchise the business, and in 1968 the first location opened its doors right here in Richmond.
From then on, under Guthrie’s own tagline, “Tender as Quail, Tasty as Pheasant,” business boomed for Golden Skillet, with stores opening in Virginia, North Carolina and Washington, D.C. By the 1970s, Golden Skillet was on a path to global expansion. Guthrie bought the rights to further franchise the business from Thalhimers and eventually bought back the original franchise locations, too.
Guthrie loved to travel, especially to Japan, and over the next decade he would go on to open spots throughout the U.S., including Puerto Rico, and in Japan and Canada (where, due to trademark issues, it was called Mary Brown’s, to honor Guthrie’s late wife). Golden Skillet grew to over 200 locations globally.
The counter at the Jahnke Road Golden Skillet (Photo by Jay Paul)
As a young girl, Castanien didn’t concern herself with the ins and outs of the business, but her mother and her many uncles knew it well. Guthrie helped each of them establish themselves in the corporation. Castanien’s mother, Anne Guthrie Causey, served as corporate bookkeeper and owned two franchise locations, while Guthrie’s youngest son Phillip took on the role of vice president of purchasing before becoming a minister in the 1970s. Guthrie’s second oldest son Joe, who enjoyed an especially close relationship with his father, eventually became franchise director and heir to Guthrie’s fortune.
But Castanien fondly remembers the grand openings of locations on Broad Street, and she recalls in vivid detail the Golden Skillet on Belt Boulevard, where she worked for a time. “There were booths in the front, and you had to sit down and wait because they would make the chicken [to order],” Castanien says. “Behind the counter, there was a glass case [with] coleslaw and pudding, macaroni salad, and potato salad. Then there was another counter and, behind that, the kitchen.” Castanien says they would brine the chicken in salt water for hours in the big walk-in fridge. Next, it would be dipped into a wet batter and then a dry mixture before being lowered into the pressure cooker — first thighs, then legs, followed by breasts and finally wings — to be fried in pure peanut oil.
After Guthrie’s death in 1981, the Golden Skillet Corporation was purchased by Dairy Queen International. Rather than opening more stores, the acquisition seems to have been a tactic to help secure DQ’s position as the eighth-ranked fast-food chain in the United States at the time, and from then on, the stores began to slowly fade away, one by one.
The Chanello’s sign at 2803 W. Broad St. is a former Golden Skillet sign that has been repurposed. (Photo by Jay Paul)
In 2021, the final remaining corporate store in Portsmouth, operated by Richard “Chicken Man” Oglesby for most of its 35-year run, shuttered. It was the last of Hampton Roads’ 45 Golden Skillet locations. Now, just a handful of independently owned Golden Skillets have endured, including stores on Jahnke Road, where the dining room feels like a time capsule of the past; Williamsburg Road in Sandston; and Washington Street in Petersburg. While these businesses use the name Golden Skillet, and rely on the recipes, each location operates autonomously and is not under ownership of the parent company.
Castanien remembers her grandfather as a bon vivant and a foodie before the term became popular. He would lavish his favored grandkids with gifts and gourmet food, particularly Castanien, who drove Guthrie around in his Cadillac Fleetwood after a stroke took him off the road. “He would take us into Safeway International, [and] he would just let you fill the cart up with all the expensive ingredients and go home and cook them. He was so much fun.”
Castanien still doesn’t know exactly what’s in Golden Skillet’s proprietary batter or dredging, though her brother claims he’s cracked the code. But, she says, the Sandston location, one of just 10 Golden Skillets still operating in the country, makes a reliably familiar version of the longstanding recipe. “Still, at family gatherings and funerals,” Castanien says, “we find a way to get the chicken and take it to the event.”
