This popular Miami restaurant chain steamed hot dogs in beer. Do you remember?
Feel like having a hot dog steamed in beer. Or maybe an Ollieburger? What about a cold one in giant schooner on your lunch break?
If you were living in South Florida from the 1950s through the ‘70s, you’d know exactly where to go.
Lums.
The chain, which started out as Lum’s with the apostrophe (just like Burdine’s / Burdines) had dozens of locations on what seemed like every main street. Biscayne Boulevard in Miami. Lincoln Road and Collins Avenue on South Beach. State Road 441 in Broward.
Let’s take a look back through the Miami Herald archives at the familiar restaurant with the red roof:
What Lums looked like
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Lums founders
Brothers Stuart and Clifford Perlman parlayed a Miami Beach hotdog stand into the original Lums restaurants.
When the Philadelphia-born Perlman brothers brought their enterprise skills to Miami, they brought with them a winning recipe. By the time they got out of the food business, there were 450 restaurants bearing the name Lums.
It was 1955. Stuart Perlman was a door-to-door salesman up north. His brother had moved to Miami earlier and become a lawyer. Stuart asked Clifford to find him a business to buy.
There were two options, a laundromat or a 16-seat diner that specialized in hot dogs steamed in beer and hamburgers. He settled on the hot dog stand, on 41st Street in Miami Beach. With $9,000 and a little help from his brother, Stuart. Perlman bought the diner, paying half down and the remainder over two years. In 1961, the company went public. Shares were sold for $1. Six years later, that $1 investment was worth $180.
Stuart Perlman once recalled the time in 1961 when a stranger walked into Lums and asked the man behind the counter what he knew of the company and its prospects. Unknowingly, the man he asked was Stuart Perlman.
“I just bought a hundred shares of stock in this company, “ the customer said, “and I’d like to know something about the management.”
Said Mr. Perlman: “I didn’t have the courage to tell him that the guy handing him his hot dog was the president of the company he had just bought stock in. He might have gone right out and sold his shares. And I know he would not have left me the quarter tip.”
The Perlman brothers later expanded their holdings to include Gold Seal Meats and Eagle Army surplus stores.
In 1969, Stuart and Clifford Perlman entered the gaming industry with the purchase of Caesars Palace in Las Vegas. For $58 million they bought the 3-year-old, 680-room hotel and turned into the flagship of their new enterprise, Caesars World.
Caesars World eventually included Caesars Tahoe, Caesars Boardwalk Regency in Atlantic City, plus nongambling resorts in the Poconos and other interests.
They became interested in Caesars Palace through the restaurant business. The brothers had met a broker for the Denny’s restaurant chain who was involved in negotiations for Denny’s purchase of the hotel. When that deal fell through, the Perlmans took up the negotiations and bought the hotel.
By 1982, Stuart and Clifford Perlman, vice chairman and chairman respectively of Caesars World, had divested themselves of the company and all gambling interests.
Lums history
▪ 1971: The Pearlmans sell the chain to John Y. Brown Jr., a founding owner of Kentucky Fried Chicken and later governor of Kentucky.
▪ 1978: Austrian restaurant magnate Friedrich Jahn buys Lums, along with International House of Pancakes.
▪ 1982: Lums files for bankruptcy.
▪ 1983: Lums No. 1 closes, two weeks after the death of founder Burnett Carvin.
This story was originally published February 12, 2025 at 11:45 AM.