He still remembers the first time he tasted it. He was in Sheboygan, Wisconsin. The milkshake, the custard, the burger — it all still sticks in his mind.
John Laskowski was always drawn back to those burgers. Whenever he was traveling, and the detour wasn’t too ridiculous, he would eat there.
For 20 years, Culver’s has been his favorite restaurant. Now, he’s bringing one to the town where he became famous as the super sub. Where he was a senior on what might be the greatest college basketball team to not win a national title. This fall, Laskowski is opening a Culver’s in Bloomington on West Third Street near Highway 37.
But he’s not doing it alone. His wife wouldn’t allow it. So he’s entering the restaurant business with his son, Scott, whose journey to the groundbreaking ceremony in the coming weeks has been a bit different than his father’s.
This may not work at all, Laskowski said. Opening a restaurant is hard, and there might be a reason no one has tried opening a Culver’s in Bloomington. Laskowski laughed himself when it was first suggested to him.
He was driving home from a conference in Chicago and stopped in the same Culver’s in Merrillville, Indiana, he always stops at when he’s driving home from Chicago. The owner recognized Laskowski and told him he should open one in Bloomington.
Laskowski laughed it off, saying the restaurant business was too hard. But by the time he got home, after driving through a snow storm, Laskowski changed his mind. He’s confident the restaurant will be a hit, popular especially on IU basketball game days for alumni looking to reminisce, but he still can’t be certain.
But what is certain is that for an amount of time, there will be a place combining all of Laskowski’s favorite things: his favorite restaurant, decorated with memorabilia from his favorite team in his favorite town.
***
Laskowski’s career path has certainly been eventful. After graduating IU, he was drafted by the Chicago Bulls, where he played for two seasons. He was also on the IU television broadcasts before working with the IU Alumni Association.
But it all started at IU. Laskowski was the sixth man for the Hoosiers, meaning he had to adapt to the game quickly after coming in.
“Coach Knight really relied on guys being able to be smart,” his teammate Steve Green said. “Some obviously, just like in real life, understand it quicker and easier than others.”
After his playing career was over, Laskowski continued to adapt.
He started as the color commentator for the television broadcasts, but after the late Chuck Marlowe retired, the broadcast needed a new play-by-play man. So Laskowski stepped up, and former IU basketball player Ted Kitchel was brought on as the new analyst.
“He didn’t have to do that,” Kitchel said. “He did that out of the goodness of his own heart. We worked together for about 13 or 14 years, and I think we had a lot of fun together.”
This was normal behavior for Laskowski, Kitchel said. His boss at the Alumni Association, JT. Forbes, agrees.
Laskowski worked as the Membership Director, but Forbes said his primary job was to solve problems.
But Laskowski’s personability extended past his job. Forbes remembers when he first met Laskowski. At first, Forbes worshipped Laskowski because of his time at IU, but when the two first met, Forbes said Laskowski was normal.
When Laskowski met Forbes’ daughter, he went even further.
“He took all the time in the world with her,” Forbes said. “She felt really lifted up by her interaction with Laskowski because he was really interested in her and what she was doing. Not everybody in the world is like that, he’s a very special human being.”
Laskowski’s personality might be why he’s able to succeed in so many different areas. Forbes said it’s because he cares about people. Kitchel said it’s because he’s such a great guy.
Now, he’s trying something entirely different again with opening a Culver’s, and early on it looks like he’s succeeding.
When he and Scott attended Culver’s ButterBurger University, a crash course in restaurant management, people said they were the best team.
“It’s like John’s 20 again,” Laskowski’s wife, Alice, said. “He’s got a second wind, and he’s been very successful in everything’s he’s ever done, but he’s ready to stay at home a little bit. We’ve got a couple grandchildren, so he wanted to do something in the area.”
But Laskowski needed help. Alice wasn’t going to let him open the restaurant by himself, and she wasn’t going to help him. She had just started working for her friend’s interior design company.
So that meant Laskowski needed one of the kids to help. The two oldest said no, since they both had steady lives and didn’t want to move back to Bloomington to run a fast food restaurant.
Scott, on the other hand, was working at the Monroe County Police Department, and wasn’t getting any closer to his dream of being a U.S. Marshall.
So when Alice sat him down and told him he needed to run this restaurant with his father, Scott listened.
“Once my mom told me that, I knew it was too good to pass up,” Scott said. “I can’t watch my family build a restaurant and not be a part of it.”
***
Scott’s life hasn’t gone exactly according to plan so far.
As the son of one of the more recognizable players from what might be the greatest era of IU basketball, there were expectations for Scott.
“It was a bit of added pressure growing up,” Scott said. “I was expected to be really good and go to Indiana and follow in my dad’s footsteps, be the next super sub, just like him, and everything like that.”
After playing his freshman year at Bloomington High School North, the Laskowskis moved to Indianapolis and Scott transferred to Carmel High School.
He was a captain his senior year. But then a freshman on the team accused Laskowski and three other seniors of repeatedly hazing him.
The case dragged out, and Scott was kicked off the basketball team, along with the three other seniors, near the end of their senior season.
Eventually, during his freshman year at Aurora University, Scott pled guilty to criminal recklessness in exchange for 40 hours of community service, one year of probation and having his other two charges dropped.
He still played basketball at Aurora, but it was nothing close to what his father had done more than 30 years ago.
“There’s a little bit of pressure growing up like that and expecting to be just like your dad was,” Scott said. “I just wasn’t as good as him, unfortunately, and things didn’t end up working out going to Indiana.”
***
He doesn’t feel any bitterness.
Laskowski said he’s happy for the accomplishments of the 1976 team, the last national champions to finish undefeated.
In the end, it might have been the lone loss to end the 1975 season that helped the Hoosiers not lose in 1976.
“We maybe didn’t have the determination, the will,” Laskowski said. “After we lost in ’75, I remember the locker room. The guys were just like, ‘We can’t let this happen again. We’re going to make sure we can follow through.’”
He still remembers 1975. He remembers nobody coming close to beating them, except Kansas early in the year. After that, the Hoosiers felt unbeatable.
They swept the Maui Invitational and what could best be described as obliterating the Big Ten. The Hoosiers finished 18-0 without any game coming close.
But eventually it began to wear down the Hoosiers, Laskowski said. Every time they played, it was the biggest game of the year for what he called the Northwesterns of the world.
“It’s easy to get up for one or two or three games, but it’s hard to get up for 18 games in a row knowing that that’s the only game they have to play all year,” Laskowski said.
If these teams were only going to win a few games all year, they wanted one to be against IU. Eventually, one of those teams did win. After losing its leading scorer Scott May in the regular season finale against Purdue, IU had a rematch with Kentucky in the Sweet 16. The Hoosiers lost for the only time all year, ending their season.
“Although we had lost our best player, we still thought we would beat them,” Laskowski said. “I think we thought each game we were going to win that game.”
***
There was something they couldn’t quite accept. They were opening a Culver’s in Bloomington, but the colors just weren’t working.
“One of the things that stands out is that Culver’s has that darn Kentucky blue color,” Scott said. “The blue and white. We call it Culver’s blue but you can’t help but notice the resemblance to Kentucky, and that’s not good at all.”
They tried to change the color scheme a little bit, but Culver’s wouldn’t allow it. So when they attended Culver’s ButterBurger University in Wisconsin, they got creative.
If the outside of the building were to remain what Scott calls Kentucky Blue, then they were going to have some fun with the restaurant’s interior.
They went to work, looking through scrapbooks and the sort looking for the right combination. Then they found it. They would be able to make the interior wallpaper of the restaurant cream and crimson, all of which will rest behind memorabilia from Laskowski’s playing days at IU.
“We’re planning on getting it pre-decorated with Indiana stuff,” Scott said. “We’ve got my dad’s jersey from his playing days, and we’re going to have that in the lobby. We’re going to have his old Bulls jersey and stuff like that.”
Another thing they found out at ButterBurger University is that they are going to be really good at this. When Laskowski was at IU, he majored in Finance Management at the Kelley School of Business.
So with Laskowski running the business side and being the face of the restaurant, Scott can run the kitchen and the day-to-day operations.
Both of them also played collegiate basketball, meaning their competitiveness is off the charts, Alice said. They view making this Culver’s successful as a challenge, a game of some sort.
Alice said she can picture a couple buses pulling up and Scott turning the kitchen into a competition. He’d challenge the kitchen to make the best 100 burgers in 10 minutes to feed everyone on the bus. That’s just who Scott is.
“Everybody said we had the perfect combination, because Scott doesn’t want to sit in front of a computer all day and do the scheduling and the ordering and all that stuff, and John doesn’t really want to sit in the back with a view of the kitchen,” Alice said. “It’s very good for the two of them.”
This Culver’s represents a new opportunity in a lot of ways, and in some ways, a second chance.
Not necessarily for Scott, although it certainly can be interpreted that way. But more for what Scott plans to do.
When he worked at the Monroe County Jail, he was always going over the top. Always asking what he can do to help and insisting he could do more.
This meant he spent a lot of time at the jail and spent time talking to a few others who spent a lot of time there. Some of those guys Scott talked might find themselves making the burgers Laskowski couldn’t get out of his head decades ago.
“When we first started the Culver’s, he said he knew a couple guys who when they get out of jail he wants to help them get a better life,” Alice said. “He’s looking at it as kind of his place to minister, too.”
