Looking Back at A & Dubs with Syl and Sandy Hantz

The reopening of the A & Dubs drive-in restaurant in June was huge news for just about anyone who grew up on the west side of Duluth over the past 75 years. The seasonal burger spot had been a summer tradition for untold scores of people over the decades, but health issues forced its owners to keep the business closed in 2024 and 2025.

When new owners took over in 2026, it launched another era for the long-beloved Lincoln Park institution. It was a big change: Syl and Sandy Hantz had operated A & Dubs since 1979. Prior to that Sandy’s parents, James and Lois Kent, ran it for 20 years.

Lloyd and Shirley Tillman established the restaurant in 1958 as part of the A&W chain. It was the Kents who broke away from A&W in 1973 and renamed the business A & Dubs.

Syl and Sandy kept the place going for more than 40 years until Syl faced health issues that prevented the couple from reopening for the 2024 summer season. Syl says he doing pretty well, today, but he and his wife decided to sell the business to new owners Michael Koralia and Ryan Spears this spring. The streak had been broken, and the time to retire had come.

“The two of us have been in it for 45 years, so I guess we did all right,” Sandy said in early June during a tandem interview with her husband. “People who grew up in this end of town knew us. At one time, Duluth had about five or six drive-ins. The people who grew up with it, we were the last ones — with the exception of Superior.”

Uniquely, Duluth and Superior share drive-ins that are related. Superior has a proper A&W restaurant — still part of the chain that produces the famous root beer. Sandy said it was her father, James, who decided to slightly alter the name of the restaurant and break from the franchise to avoid making changes corporate leadership wanted. Even then, 25 years or so into things, the place knew what it was and what its customers were looking for.

“We’d get the people that come back for school reunions or weddings,” Syl recalled, “and I can’t even tell you how many times we’d have somebody that would come in and it would be just like, ‘Oh, man, I’m so glad you guys are still [here].’ We didn’t change much to speak of, so they always had that opportunity to go back.”

“It’s a little bit of nostalgia,” Sandy said. “We operated as it was originally intended — a 1950s drive-in with carhops. It was a bit of Americana that had gone by the wayside. But, here in Duluth, you could still have it.”

But it wasn’t just that, exactly; it was that the specific A & Dubs experience was only available there and there alone. It was a rare bird: a mom-and-pop drive-in that wanted to be what it was and nothing else. And that’s all its customers ever asked for from it.

Years flew by, as they tend to. Suddenly, the Hantzes had to face the starkness of reality.

“It was a tough, tough call, because I’m the one that ended up having the health issues,” Syl said of closing the restaurant in 2024. “And there was no way that my wife could handle it alone, and we didn’t have children ourselves. We burned up all our nephews and nieces and close friends. The business was the first job for a lot of the youth — hundreds of them.”

This is perhaps one of the most noteworthy aspects of the A & Dubs story. Quietly, Syl and Sandy helped so many young Duluthians into the workforce and gave them a sense of community and responsibility that kids getting a job at Chipotle or Circle K probably don’t get to feel. The history of A & Dubs preceded it.

“We had a lot of great kids that went through here and were pretty successful in what they did after moving on. We trained them right,” Syl said, proudly.

This, of course, can continue with the new owners. While they indeed have made some changes, they still have a sense of respect for the history of the place.

“It’s going to be a new era,” Sandy said. “They’re going to keep some of the traditional drive-in [feel], but they’re adding a new generation, a new vision. We’re just keeping our fingers crossed that the public is patient and gives them time to find their zone, because we’ve been 50 years doing it. We’ve got a system. When you walk into something that’s new to you, there’s going to be a lot of adjustment.”

Syl and Sandy, who were shocked by the response on the internet after they announced the drive-in’s closing, said that they were equally thrilled to see how happy the community was after its return was trumpeted. “It got out there, and the response was uplifting and exciting for people,” Syl said.

The two have assisted the new owners with recipes and made themselves available for advice and assistance, but they are largely content to step aside and let them carve their own path.

“We hope that they have success,” Syl said. “We’re pulling for them. But I know for a fact their heads are going to be swimming, because they would be swimming for us when we would open up every year.”

Even though the Hantzes’ reign as the king and queen of Duluth drive-in owners came to an abrupt end a few years ago, they are happy to see their restaurant reborn. The community reaction to its revival meant that they had done something wonderful over all those decades — something that meant something to people that went beyond just filling their stomachs.

“We did the best that we could,” Syl said, “and that’s all we could do.”