Family tradition

Even in the middle of the afternoon on a weekday, Wib's Drive-In in Jackson is packed.

The small restaurant's two and four-person booths are nearly full, and a steady flow of customers keeps the pick-up area on the restaurant's east side busy. Teenagers on Christmas break, multiple generations of family and workers grabbing a quick lunch make up the crowd. A large stack of Wib's barbecue sandwiches goes quickly in the kitchen as the orders are filled.

Barbecue sandwiches stand ready for the next rush of customers as Tracy Taylor checks an order Friday, December 28, 2007, at Wib's Drive-In in Jackson. (Kit Doyle)

"This is pretty normal," says A.D. Hoffman, who owns the restaurant with his wife Judy.

For more than 60 years Wib's has been a constant in Jackson, building a reputation on the back of its barbecue sandwiches and signature sauce.

A sign imprinted with the Coca-Cola logo on the front of the building sums it up for those about to enter: "Barbecue is our specialty."

In fact, barbecue is just about all Wib's does. The menu is simple -- several different types of barbecue sandwiches (some with "smokier" meat that comes from the outside of the pork shoulder, some with minced meat, some with homemade pimento cheese), a few grilled cheese options, drinks, a few sides and fried pies.

It's much the same way it was when Wib Lohman started the place in 1947, says A.D.

"It really hasn't changed," A.D. says. The building is the same, and A.D. Hoffman uses the same technique to cook and cut his pork shoulder that the restaurant's second owner, Jack Hoffmeister, showed him when A.D. was a boy, shortly after his parents bought the place.

A.D. has been tied to Wib's since 1972, the year his parents purchased the restaurant. Back when he was a teenager, just about every high school student in Jackson worked there at one point or another, A.D. says.

For A.D. it was just natural to keep working there, and later to own the local institution his parents had bought from Hoffmeister years ago.

Wib's Drive-In has been a family affair since its inception. The Hoffman family of A.D. and Judy, left, took over in 1986 and now enjoy the help they receive from their children: Graham, 15, Danielle, 19, and Emily, 17. (Kit Doyle)

For Judy Hoffman the story is a bit different. She grew up in Cape Girardeau and had never even heard about Wib's until she met A.D. when she was a college student. Before then she'd had pulled, southern-style barbecue, not the sliced kind Wib's serves up. She fell in love with the food and with A.D., and gave up a potential dental career to help run the business.

Wib's Drive-In, along Highway 67 just north of Jackson, has been serving up barbecue since 1947. (Kit Doyle)

The Hoffman children, two daughters and a son, all teenagers, work at Wib's, though A.D. and Judy said they don't know if one of them will keep the restaurant going.

"It's a tradition for Jackson people, but it's also become and integral part of our family life," Judy says.

But A.D. and Judy have no plans to stop any time soon.

Wib's has survived the installation of an interstate that took loads of traffic away from its location on U.S. 61 (though A.D. said Hoffmeister told him the day the Interstate opened was one of his busiest) and six decades of change and growth in Jackson itself.

And when A.D. and Judy are ready to retire, A.D. said he thinks the restaurant will keep going, whether it stays in the family or goes to the next, the same way it came to the Hoffmans.