Prince's Hamburgers Marks 75th Birthday

Nearly two decades after it almost flipped its last burger, Prince's Hamburgers is still cooking, and celebrating its 75th anniversary.

The restaurant opened its first Houston location in 1934 and soon expanded to eighteen.

Those were the days of the carhop and in 1950, Elizabeth Flores donned the silky uniform.

She was working at Prince's when Elvis Presley stopped in for a meal, after his Houston gig.

"Young girls were hollering and screaming just like you see it in the concert," she recalled.

Flores went from carhop to restaurant manager but by the oil bust, business was bad and the eighteen locations had shrunk to just one. The owner handed Flores the keys in gratitude for her years of service.

"He says, 'It's yours.' So I took it."

In 1990, the last Prince's location on South Main Street closed down but Flores passed the business on to her former meat vendor, John Broussard.

He reopened at another spot in 1993 and now there are four Prince's restaurants.

George Price drove 100 miles to visit one of them, and give his grandchildren a taste of Price's adolescence.

"That was our hangout," recalled Price, "to drive through the Prince's and have the gal come out, put her card in the wiper, and get a great hamburger and a malt. We had a hamburger and a malt, today!"


-- Take a Peek at Prince's Hamburgers Memories