Spencer’s Dairy Bar sees new success with old recipe

BOONEVILLE, Ky. (WYMT) – Spencer’s Dairy Bar has been a staple of the Owsley County community for more than seven decades.

One of the owners, Judy Spencer, said people go out of their way there just for a meal.

“And they always said, ‘We’ll go down there and eat before we go home.’ And when I worked some, I realized that some of them are from different counties and all. Lee County, all of the counties around us. So, we’ve really appreciated it over the years,” she said.

Spencer said they changed their recipe for the burger back to handmade instead of the frozen patties they used for nearly 20 years.

“It was improving with outsiders stopping here that it was getting to be a hard job to roll them out. It was a cold job, your hands would get so cold,” said Spencer.

She said they wanted to do something special for their customers.

“It had been a good business here for years since 1945, never did see a need to close. So, they wanted to do something for the customers so they brought back the old hamburgers they rolled out in balls and put their on recipe with the hamburger,” Spencer explained. “I think they sold 200 pounds of hamburger.”

She said it felt like a reunion seeing the parking lot packed and even seeing some familiar faces.

“We even had some people that worked in the dairy bar that came back and helped us that didn’t even want to be paid,” she said.

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