On the northwest side of Chicago, in the Portage Park neighborhood, my dad (Dominic Guinta) came up with an idea for keeping my brother Joe and myself Sam busy and out of trouble, doing something productive, during the summer of 1964.

From a 6 x 10 foot trailer that our father rented for us next to the gas station near our Chicago home, we sold Vienna Hot Dogs for a quarter and soft drinks for a dime that first summer. Sammie’s was operated seasonally six months a year. Growing up and moving on, we opened a year-round store in Chicago 1970 and two years later in 1972 a second in Grayslake, where we turned a walk-up summertime stand into a year-round fast-food operation.