Rock Cafe in Stroud is for sale

City Manager Tim Schook was among those uncertain if the news was indeed true, at least until the “For Sale” sign appeared late Monday afternoon.

“The place is huge for our town,” Schook said. “I wish we had five or six Rock Cafes. There are a lot of people who stop in our town just to eat there.”

The Rock Cafe dates to 1939, and according to legend, for many years the management changed on a yearly basis. Welch bought the cafe in 1993 when she returned to Oklahoma to oversee her grandmother's nearby property. Over the next several years, as Route 66 nostalgia took hold in the age of interstate highways, Welch oversaw the cafe's transformation into an international top attraction.

Welch first attracted headlines in the early 1990s, after she entertained broadcaster Bryant Gumbel, who stopped by, played with her 6-year-old daughter Alexis, and helped with the evening closing of the cafe.

In later years, Welch attracted an up-and-coming Hollywood writer and animator, John Lasseter. He visited the cafe repeatedly over four years to learn about small-town life along Route 66. Those visits are now legendary, capped off with the announcement by Lasseter that Welch had inspired the character of Sally in the hit Pixar film that followed: “Cars.”

Tragedy followed with a fire that destroyed virtually everything but the rock shell of the building in 2008. Welch not only rebuilt, but with the help of preservationist David Burke, they proved the experts wrong when they managed to keep the building on the National Register of Historic Places.

Time to travel

Now the business, including the original 1939 Wolf grill that survived the flames thanks to being shielded by a fallen refrigerator, is up for sale. The listing price by broker Todd Herndon with Herndon & Kelley Commercial Real Estate is $300,000.