LIMA — Brianna Bryant couldn’t hold back the tears as she recalled fond memories of Lickity Split restaurant, and how owner Betty Watters helped shape her into the woman she is today.
“Betty is just an amazing person,” said Bryant, who started working at the restaurant when she was 15 years old. “She helped me with my work ethic, and working here really brought me out of my shell. It’s a very loving place, and it’s like a family.”
Bryant’s emotions stemmed from Watters’ decision to close the restaurant after 39 years in business. May 29 will mark the final day the North West Street staple is open.
The 76-year-old Watters has been plagued by back problems within the last year, and with no one to pass the restaurant to, she decided it was time to call it quits. Though she is ready for retirement — “I want to go fishing,” she said with a laugh — Watters will miss the employees and customers she’s grown to love.
“They all become family after awhile,” Watters said. “I’ll miss them the most.”
Tracy Core, a cook who has worked at Lickity Split for more than 20 years, said she and Watters didn’t have the typical employee-boss relationship.
“She was a boss but she was more of a good friend,” Core said. “She was a mother figure toward a lot of people, and a best friend to even more.”
While Watters and her employees became like family, so did her regular customers. Some of them have been coming in since the restaurant opened nearly 40 years ago.
“I told [employees] when I hired them that I don’t want this to be like McDonald’s — they’re not a number, they’re people that you need to get to know,” Watters said.
She said the relationship she and her employees developed with their regulars is unlike any other restaurant. There have been water gun and whipped cream fights, pranks like Saran-wrapping customers’ cars, and the occasional pie to the face.
“You can get away with anything here,” said Butch Black, a regular customer who often breaks out into song. “I don’t know where else I can go that’s like here. If I do, they’ll want to take me to the funny farm.”
Though the customers and employees sometimes yell back and forth or give one another a hard time, they also help each other out. Watters said her regulars will fix broken light sockets or dishwashers free-of-charge, and will sometimes put on an apron and serve coffee when the restaurant gets busy. Black said a regular even let a man use his oxygen tank when he passed out on the floor, potentially saving his life at the risk of his own.
“We’re all friends, so if one person needs something, everybody is there for those people,” said Janice Moore, who has been frequenting the restaurant for four years.
For these people, the future is unknown. They don’t know where they’ll go next, and they’re not sure how other restaurants will react to their antics. But no matter where they go, Moore said one thing is for certain.
“We’ll never find another Lickity Split.”
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