Scot’s

Scot’s was a small chain of McDonald’s knock-offs and we used to go to the one located on the Southwest corner of Pico Boulevard and Westwood — land that now contains a Barnes & Noble.  Their mascot, who I believe only existed as one piece of line art, was a sexy lady wearing kilts and doing a dance.  They had a huge drawing of her towering over the main building.

One suspects the lady and the chain’s name was because someone thought, “Hmm…maybe people go to McDonald’s because they think it’s Scottish.”  Or perhaps the thought process was that people weren’t that familiar yet with McDonald’s — this was before that company’s big advertising blitz — and that they’d go to Scot’s, thinking it was the place they had in mind.  Either way, there was nothing else at Scot’s that had anything to do with Scotland unless it was that the food was cheap and there’s a stereotype of Scottish folks as excessively frugal.

The menu was pretty much what McDonald’s then had plus a few extra items such as pizza.  When they finally closed down, the structure at Pico and Westwood went through a year or three of name and ownership changes.  For a while, it was Pride’s, then something else, then something else.  They finally cleared the land and built a Lone Ranger Restaurant there.  It didn’t last long, either.