Maintaining a sense of yesterday while continuing to make great food and make memories for the younger generation is key to Cy’s Drive In Restaurant which has been operating in the Springs since the 1940s. The current owner, Kathy Micci, who has operated it since 2005, continues to make shakes, malts and burgers that still bring that sense of fun and comfort.
Micci says initially taking ownership in the mid-2000s was an unusual situation. Her daughter Kat had been working at Cy’s at the time. Micci, her mother Kathryn, and her daughter, all in the choir at Sacred Heart Church, had stopped by Cy’s and talked to then owner Owen McKinney about buying an ad. He joked, saying “Why don’t you just buy the diner and get your own advertisement.” Micci thought about it. She was working full-time as a software engineer and thought maybe she could do this on the side. That was in 2005, and she has now had the restaurant for 18 years. “I never had experience with any of this kind of stuff but, I thought, with the help of my daughter, that I can probably do this.” She raised the financing and bought the restaurant.
Micci initially thought it would be a good opportunity for retirement. She says she made very few changes to the menu when she bought it. The only adjustments she made were based on need and size.
The Importance of Mainstay Menu Items at Cy’s Drive In
One of their mainstays has always been the Alaskan Burger which is two meat patties with cheese, brioche bun, lettuce, and Thousand Island dressing. She says the original owner, Cy Long, introduced the burger back in 1959 when Alaska became a state. “It was a big state so big burger! And Alaska was the 49th state so he originally sold it for 49 cents.” Micci said that she had come to Cy’s Drive-In since she was a child and loved this burger.
She says “Our bestsellers are just classic cheeseburgers. We use premium quality beef, so natural hormones and additive free.” She says a lot of people are really drawn to that, “just the fact that it is not overly processed or full of God only knows what. This is quality meat.”
Micci says they did transition a bit during the pandemic. One of the biggest things she said was the bread. “We could not get the buns that we used to have originally. And so, we ended up going with a brioche bun from one of our suppliers: Roma. And that has been a huge improvement. It’s a good bun.”
Another change was in packaging because, during the time of the pandemic, everything had to be takeout. Micci says they have never gone back to using the old baskets and paper liners. “It’s just that we found that it’s actually easier to wrap it and put it in a bag. We have less mistakes and it doesn’t sit exposed to the elements.”
Steady Regulars with Their Consistent Orders
Micci says that she has a good crew that works for her and pretty steady regulars. “We have a lot of customers, and when they call in, we know exactly who they are by what they order.” She says many always order exactly the same thing and have been coming for years and years. She says recently, though, they’ve had a lot of new customers and people walking in, saying, ”I’ve passed by this place for almost 25 years. And today I decided to stop.”
Micci says she loves repeat customers. “There’s one lady, she comes in and always orders the same thing…a hot dog of all things at a hamburger restaurant. But she’s real friendly. I enjoy people like that. They come back very frequently, and this lady, she’s always very complimentary, very sweet. And a lot of the people that come in — they walk through the door, and you go, ‘Oh, yeah, vanilla shake, whipped cream, no cherry, no lid.’ That’s all they ever get.”
The shakes, malts, and desserts are a big part of their business as well, beyond the burgers. For shakes, Micci says they use the same kind of milk as many other places in town. “One of the biggest differences is the ingredients: the strawberry, the cherry, the blueberry, stuff like that…it’s all premium. I mean, it’s not the canned stuff. It’s really good stuff.” Micci also says, in preparing some of the shakes, they have also been willing to try some new things. “I’m up for it. I don’t know some of it, but if you can tell me what you want, we’ll figure it out.”
Learning Special Orders
Micci says one example of this is a lady who came in and wanted a Boston shake, which involves chocolate malt intermixed with vanilla soft serve and a couple of other ingredients. “She kind of walked me through it and I told her, ‘I’ll never remember this so next time you come in, you’re going to have to walk me through it.’ She said some people have also asked for Neapolitan shakes. “Those kind of take way more time than we really like to spend because you have to do a chocolate, and then you make a strawberry and put it on top [of each other] and then vanilla on top of that.”
Micci says they always try to make sure that kids have a good time as well. “We put sprinkles on their ice cream cones, and we really do try to cater to their little whims and whatever. We try to keep it light.” She says that they also added corn dogs to the menu. “It’s a beef corn dog and they are really good. I love them. And my grandkids love them.” She says that is where the idea came from.
She says one of the things that still amazes her is that when her daughter Kat cooks during the day, she recognizes faces and knows their “go-to” order most times. Micci laughs and says, “She’ll say, ‘Oh, I know who that is, and they don’t want tomato.’” One older lady, Micci continues, comes in and she only gets a junior jalapeno burger. “And she loves it! And there’s another woman that comes in and she gets two large chocolate shakes for her mother. Her mother puts them in little containers and puts them in her freezer and she just eats a little every day.” Micci says she always hears a lot of interesting stories. She says last month a woman came in who was a car hop at the original Cy’s on Colorado Avenue. “It was pretty fun to talk to her.”
The Allure of Green Chili
Micci laughs that the one thing they run out of the most frequently is green chili. Originally, she said including that on the menu was just kind of a whim. It was “Oh, let’s do a green chili burger.” Micci explains that it is a smothered burger, “kind of like a Pueblo slopper,”, and they cover it in green chili. “Every once in a while, we do actually run out of [green chili] because it goes on burgers, fries. It gets crazy when you’re trying to do all these specialty things” Micci says she tried taking green chili off the menu.” And I had such an outcry I thought, ‘All right. We’ll bring it back!’”
For all the work and tribulations, Micci says the restaurant is very much like a family. “And we try to make it feel like a family to the people that come in as much as possible. We really strive to do our best and to offer good customer service, quality products, and a nice atmosphere.”
