California smashburger pioneer is for sale but still dishing them up

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REDDING — The tale of one of California’s oldest smashburger joints begins during the Great Depression, with an 18-year-old named Bud Pennington.In 1938, Pennington pitched a tent outside the hiring hall for workers building the Shasta Dam, set up some tree stumps for seats and started hawking grub.Twenty-five cents bought a cup of coffee, a piece of pie and one of the thin, crispy hamburgers that would make Pennington a legend in Northern California.It wasn’t exactly the best time to be starting a business, with 19% of the country’s workforce out of a job.But thousands of men were pouring into Redding to build the dam — a 602-foot concrete behemoth that irrigates millions of acres of Central Valley farmland — and they sure worked up an appetite.The builders took a liking to the young man and his aptly-named pop-up stand: Damburger.

And for 88 years, Damburger — now operating out of a squat brick-and-mortar restaurant in downtown Redding — has dished out what is, according to its official motto, “the best hamburger by a dam site.” Only three families have owned the unpretentious diner with its black bar stools, scuffed tile floors and enough nostalgia to fill Shasta Lake.But the people of Redding nearly had a collective heart attack last August when the restaurant’s longtime owners, sisters Julie Malik and Nell Cox, made a stunning announcement: Damburger is for sale.

The restaurant has been in their family for four decades.Their parents bought it in 1979 — when Malik was 8 and Cox was 6 — and gave it to their daughters in 2005.

Malik and Cox, now in their 50s, said it’s time to pass the baton.The restaurant is listed for $975,000 — the median sale price of a single-family home in Los Angeles.

Customers flipped out when they announced the sale, grilling the sisters — puns intended — about whether the restaurant would close.After assuring th...