A Pops satellite store in north Oklahoma City closed just before Christmas, although the original restaurant and convenience store that features 600 flavors of soda and a 66-foot-tall LED soda bottle along Route 66 in Arcadia, Oklahoma, continues to run.
The Pops site at 6447 Avondale Drive in the Nichols Hills section of Oklahoma City opened about three years ago.
The Pops Nichols Hills page on Facebook posted this message Dec. 21:
The Nichols Hills site also could lay claim to a Route 66 connection. It sat just a stone’s throw from the Western Avenue alignment that served as Beltline Route 66 from 1931 to 1947.
A few people who commented on social media about the Nichols Hills closing of Pops noted it was in a place that was hard to see from the main road.
Also, consolidation of Pops’ operations probably was inevitable after the auto-accident death in 2016 of founder and former Chesapeake Energy Co. chief executive Aubrey McClendon. He was 56.
McClendon also was an investor in other restaurants in OKC on Route 66, including several in the historic Will Rogers Theatre (on the Western Avenue alignment), Republic Gastropub (on Classen) and The Drake (on Northwest 23rd). At least two other Oklahoma City restaurants he invested in — Irma’s Burger Shack and Deep Fork Grill — closed in the last 2 1/2 years.
The original flagship Pops in Arcadia opened in 2007 to huge crowds, and it still gets crowded on the weekends.
(Image of varieties of soda at Pops in Arcadia, Oklahoma, by Randy Lane via Flickr)