Hot dogs, bratwurst served at old Prices Corner post office

Glenn Wootten has been secretly coveting a tiny, abandoned building in the back parking lot of the Prices Corner Shopping Center for nearly a decade.

Wootten says every day he drove on Newport Gap Pike near Kirkwood Highway to his Appleton Catering in Belvidere  he saw the building and often thought about using it for some kind of food service business. 

"I looked at it and thought 'I have to do something with that.' I've been planning menus in my head for years," he says.

Last year, Wootten finally approached the shopping center owners and asked if he could lease the building for Savannah's, a new walk-up eatery. Permission was granted. For the past 24 years, the building near the back of the former Sears store was only being used for storage.

Savannah's, named after Wootten's granddaughter, opened in May.

Customers can park and walk up to a window and order jumbo $3.50 hot dogs, $4.50 bratwursts on buns, pulled pork sandwiches for $6.50, a trio of crab cake sliders for $9.50, chips, soft drinks and $2.50 cups of cherry, lemon, watermelon, mango and blueberry Italian water ice.

Hours are 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Mondays through Saturdays. Credit cards are accepted.

Cooking isn't done in the building. Appleton Catering, less than a mile away, serves as a commissary and the initial food preparation is done there. A food truck, equipped with running water and electricity, is parked in the back of Savannah's. Employees assemble the sandwiches there.

Wootten says when he first leased the building, he thought it was an old Fotomat kiosk.

Fotomat, a film processing company founded in California, once operated drive-thru outlets in more than 3,000 shopping center parking lots in the U.S. The business thrived in the 1970s and 1980s, but by the 1990s, the kiosks were phased out.

While Prices Corner had a Fotomat hut, it was in the front of the shopping center off Kirkwood Highway. The hut was jettisoned years ago.

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Actually, recycling a Fotomot into a food business has been done before in Delaware. In 1995, a drive-thru coffee/espresso bar opened in an old Fotomat kiosk in Newark's College Square Shopping Center. It didn't last long and is no longer operating.

Wootten said he has since learned the Prices Corner building now housing Savannah's had been a post office. He's guessing, because of old paperwork he found inside, it stopped operating in 1994. 

According to News Journal archives, the site opened 52 years ago as an automated, "sub post office." A main post office had once been in the shopping center.

The wooden post office substation was one of 100 that were installed in the country in 1966 and 1967, according to News Journal archives. The building featured a series of vending machines, including a coin changer, a dollar changer, and those that dispensed stamps, post cards and envelopes.

At that time, the machines were considered modern, innovative and the height of technology.

"I'm told [the building] contains the latest, most advanced equipment to be found anywhere in the world today," the Wilmington Postmaster told The News Journal about the sub post office in 1966.

"Some of its equipment is so sensitive, it's frightening. It will give change for a dollar, if the instructions are followed properly," he said. "But if you put in a five or 10, it will reject it. Amazing."

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Since taking over the site, Wootten has replaced all the lights under an awning and repainted the structure white. He added yellow and red stripes to represent mustard and ketchup.

Savannah's food is mostly to-go, but the eatery does have four tables with rainbow-striped Tommy Bahama umbrellas. The building is decorated with pots filled with red silk flowers and Wootten installed fake windows he purchased on Craigslist and added a barn-type door.

Business has been steadily growing.  "Every hour someone stops in and says, 'Wow. This is so cool,'" he says. Wootten says the only slow times are rainy days. 

The food is summer casual. All-beef, 10-inch hot dogs are served on steak rolls delivered daily from nearby Serpe's Bakery in Elsmere.

"They're still warm when they get here," Wootten says. Bratwurst sandwiches ($4.50), come with two links of the German sausage. The bratwurst and hot dogs can be topped with beef chili, sauerkraut, and coleslaw for an extra fee.

Wootten says he plans to keep the eatery open into the fall months and possibly the winter, depending on the weather. He will likely offer soup when the temperatures fall. Appleton Catering sells 20 different varieties of soup.

Wootten says he even envisions possibly setting up a cooking station in the parking lot and selling made-to-order omelets. 

"We can do anything we want. The possibilities are endless," he says.

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Contact Patricia Talorico at (302) 324-2861 or ptalorico@delawareonline.com and on Twitter @pattytalorico