W.W. "Biff" Naylor is a retired restaurant owner in Los Angeles, California. He was born in Oakland, California in 1939 and graduated from

Pennsylvania State University The Pennsylvania State University (Penn State or PSU) is a Public university, public Commonwealth System of Higher Education, state-related Land-grant university, land-grant research university with campuses and facilities throughout Pennsylvan ...

. His father W.W. “Tiny” Naylor started Tiny's Waffle Shops in Central California in the 1920s, and operated a chain of more than 40 Tiny Naylor's and Biff's restaurants in Southern California. Biff Naylor took over operations of Tiny Naylor's after his father's death in 1959 and was still operating at least one location in 1999. The Biff's restaurant chain of the 1940s was a "forerunner to all the modern coffee shops," Naylor told the San Jose Mercury News in 2016. Those restaurants employed modern architecture in the googie style, and innovations that would be adopted widely through the restaurant industry including open exhibition cooking kitchen, stainless steel counters, refrigerated pie cases, and plate "lowerators" that warmed or cooled plates as needed. In 2017

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food critic Patric Kuh called the longtime restaurant operator "Diner royalty".

Saveur ''Saveur'' is an online gourmet, food, wine, and travel magazine that publishes essays about various world cuisines. The publication was co-founded by Dorothy Kalins, Michael Grossman, Christopher Hirsheimer, and Colman Andrews, who was also the ...

magazine wrote that Biff Naylor created "The best damn coffee shops ever" in their "Saveur 100" list Naylor is the oldest of five brothers who ran American Restaurant Services, Inc. which operated Café River City in Sacramento, California, Tiny's family restaurant in Capitola, California, and seven Cindy's coffee shops in Northern California. He became chief executive of the Hershel's Delicatessen chain, created by Denny's founder Harold Butler, in 1987. Naylor joined the board of the California Restaurant Association in 1983 and is former chairman of the National Restaurant Association. Naylor hired Godfather's Pizza president

Herman Cain Herman Cain (December 13, 1945July 30, 2020) was an American businessman and Tea Party movement activist within the Republican Party. Born in Memphis, Tennessee, Cain grew up in Georgia and graduated from Morehouse College with a bachelor's d ...

as president of the National Restaurant Association in 1996 In 2004 Naylor came out of retirement to purchase the Du-par's restaurant chain. He brought in his chef daughter Jennifer Naylor, who had formerly worked with chef

Wolfgang Puck Wolfgang Johannes Puck (born July 8, 1949) is an Austrian-American chef and restaurateur. Early life and career Puck was born in Sankt Veit an der Glan, Austria. He learned cooking from his mother, who was a pastry chef. He took the surname o ...

, to revamp the menu. He sold the company in 2018.

Bibliography

* * * * (previously published in 1986 as ''Googie: Fifties Coffee Shop Architecture'' ) *

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Naylor, Bill American restaurateurs American chief executives of food industry companies Businesspeople from Los Angeles 20th-century American businesspeople Living people Year of birth missing (living people) Pennsylvania State University alumni