File talk:Plantation Key Professional Building, 88539 Overseas Hwy, Tavernier, FL.jpg

Former Stuckey's

The author/photographer is correct. This building was a Stuckey's until the mid 70's, and was known as Stuckey's #174. My grandparents managed it. The phone number was 305-852-5886. This phone rang both in the manager's office as well as the Stuckey's manager's trailer in the Vacation Village trailer park, which was parked north of where Airstream Lane, Vacation Drive, and Village Street come together (see Google map - this is not the original trailer, but only where it sat). This Stuckey's had the uniqueness of being the only Stuckey's with a full-fledged restaurant, and not "just a snack bar", which happened to be located to the right of the building looking from the street. The restaurant featured a menu with a very wide variety of real home cooked food, Key Lime pie, salad, fresh fruit and vegetables, china, silverware, glasses, coffee mugs, waitresses, etc. On the other hand, all other Stuckey's had snack bars, featuring fast food - typically "grease burgers and fat fries", paper plates, paper cups, plastic utensils, and ketchup/mustard/mayo in these annoying little plastic packs. This Plantation Key restaurant, a gathering point for the locals (who called themselves "Conchs", after the local sea snail) was an irritant to the upper echelons in Eastman, who viewed it as a non-conformance, and who claimed that Stuckey's was in the candy business, and not the restaurant business. As long as my grandparents were around, they refused to convert it to a snack bar, citing that not only was the restaurant making money, but it was what brought customers into the building in the first place, where they would subsequently buy Eastman's overpriced candy, gasoline which was also higher priced than the local competition, or junk in the souvenir section (to the left of the building, looking from the street). In other words, the restaurant was the cash cow, and the reason #174 ran in the green. Within weeks (maybe days) of my grandparents' retirement in 1974, the new #174 managers obediently complied with Eastman's demand, disbanding the restaurant, and establishing a snack bar. Just like all the other Stuckey's. But with the aforementioned cash cow gone, what was once a very regular local clientele who considered the restaurant to be a part of their daily lives, took their appetites, business, and most importantly, their money elsewhere. This put #174 on a downward slide, now operating in the red. By 1976 or 1977, #174 was gone forever, and the building became a brand-x private restaurant, and eventually by the early 90's the professional building that exists today. This seems not only to have been the death blow to #174, but contributory to Stuckey's death as a whole. Thanks for sharing! PS: is there still the Key Lime tree out back, by the door which led to the kitchen? Brewer Bob (talk) 23:09, 13 August 2016 (UTC)