Chicken Annie's Original
1934 - present
In March 1933 Charle Pichler an Austrian Hungarian immigrant was struck by a coal cart that was moving down the mine tracks. Both legs were severely damaged, leading to the amputation of his right leg, forcing his wife Annie to find a way to provide for the family of five during what would be come to known as the Great Depression.
Across the Southeast Kansas region, stretched large deposits of bitumious coal so abundant that
veins of coal would be found extruded above the ground through the area.
It was 1866 and the Civil War had just ended, while immigrant families who were escaping the war in Europe, began to settle in to the area to work the mines.
Various camps of the European Immigrants began the back breaking work as the mining hit it's peak in 1914 with roughly 12,000 miners and their families producing more than 1/3rd of the nations coal.
In March 1933 Charlie Pichler an Austrian Hungarian immigrant was struck by a coal cart that was moving down the mine tracks. Both legs were severely damaged, leading to the amputation of his right leg, forcing his wife Annie to find a way to provide for the family of five during what would be come to known as the Great Depression.
Desperate at the time, Annie Pichler did what she knew best, for only a few cents she would offer sandwiches and hooch to the miners traveling to and from work. The sandwiches which consisted of ham or veal, provided a few cents of income as they struggled. Soon for a mere 25cents, the miners could buy a couple quarts of hooch also.
It was in 1934, less than a year since the accident, Annie began to take advantage of the free-range chickens that were in their front yard. Frying them on the coal heated stove in her kitchen, she began to expand as the community of miners eating at her home grew.
It didn't take long with her cooking skills to soon be providing potato salad, coleslaw, slices of white bread to the miners, the miners families, and even the travelers that now passed through the increasingly busy Jefferson Highway.
It wasn't long before Chicken Annie's could provide you three pieces of chicken, German potato salad, cole slaw, a piece of pickled pepper, a slice of tomato and a slice of white bread for only 75 cents.
Charlie passed away in 1978, and Annie passed in 1991. Two people who set into motion a legacy that has become Chicken Annie's, and has touched many families to this day.