![]() ![]() ![]() “Some of the franchisees tried to change their name and it ruined them,” Don Stoneking said.ĭon Stoneking got a lawyer and purchased the building from the bankrupt chain, and continued on with the Neptune name. ![]() Things started to go downhill for Neptune after the oil bust, and the chain filed for bankruptcy in the mid 1980s. Neptune was famous for its fresh-baked bread - and had its corporate headquarters and bakery near Interstate 35 and SE 89. In the early 1980s, there were 17 stretching from Norman to Enid. Today, The Stonekings’ restaurant has long outlived the rest of its sister restaurants and is the last surviving of the Neptune chain. “(Ron Taylor) was reluctant to give me the franchise he thought I was just a young kid,” Don Stoneking said. Stoneking’s parents operated a Neptune franchise in Midwest City, where he worked until purchasing the Classen store when he was just 21. However, Neptune continues to have a loyal clientele. Today, Neptune sits across the street from a Subway and Lee’s Sandwiches - there’s also a Jersey Mike’s Subs a few blocks down. “They were really about the only submarine sandwich shop around at that time,” Don Stoneking said. In a time before the spread of sandwich franchises like Subway and Quizno’s, the Neptune concept thrived in the Oklahoma City metro area. The Neptune brand was founded in the early 1970s by an Oklahoma man named Ron Taylor, who sold franchises for the submarine restaurant concept across the metro area. Neptune was robbed three times within the span of a month in 1995. because of a spate of robberies at the restaurant in the 1990s. ![]() The Stonekings still close the lobby each day after the lunch rush, only taking drive-thru orders after 3 p.m. He once witnessed a gun fight in front of the shop and was interviewed by local television news crews after a man was shot and killed in his car in front of his wife and children during a botched robbery near the restaurant. In the 1990s, the neighborhood was rough, Don Stoneking said. “Over the years, it’s gone from being a fairly decent neighborhood, to a fairly bad neighborhood, to now it’s on the rise again,” Kelly Stoneking said. The neighborhood around the sandwich shop has changed from being an area of middle-class and working-class families to experiencing the decline of Oklahoma City’s urban core in the 1980s into the 1990s, to revival with its transformation in recent years into Oklahoma City’s Asian district. “I think people continue to come here because of the consistency, and it’s a good product for a good price.” “I never thought I would still be working here 30 years later when I started here,” she said. Wife Kelly Stoneking started working at Neptune in 1981 as a high school student at Northwest Classen High School. “A lot of my customers have been coming here since it was Quick’s,” said Neptune owner Don Stoneking, who started as a Neptune franchisee in 1983. With its faded yellow Formica countertops, the aura of the 1970s hangs as thick in the air of the shop as the smell of fresh-baked bread. The lobby and dining area was added about 1974, when the restaurant was converted into a Neptune Submarine Sandwiches shop. Built in the early 1960s, the restaurant had no dining room, but it sold 15-cent burgers from a walk-up window. The building at 3301 N Classen was once the home of Quick’s Hamburgers, a popular hangout for local teenagers on the weekend cruise in the 1960s and early 1970s. With its 60s-era hyperbolic paraboloid roof and faded sign boasting fresh-baked bread, Neptune Submarine Sandwiches is like a little pickled piece of lost Oklahoma City history near NW 30 and Classen. ![]()
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