Hey, Jesse Dukes here, filling in for Alexandra Solomon as editor.

Back in 2019, Curious City talked with Connor McNamara at one of his favorite restaurants.

It's called Nicky's Grill and Yogurt Oasis in Beverly on Chicago's South Side.

So I grew up just a few blocks from here.

We've been coming here for as long as I can remember.

After I learned how to ride a bike, we came here for Blue Moon ice cream. The cheese fries are great, pizza puffs, hot dogs,

you name it. As I grew up, I started noticing that there were more Nickies around the south

side. Started driving around. It's like, hey, there's Nickies everywhere. And that made me wonder

why there were so many Nickies

and they'll seem to have the same menu, but not necessarily the same decor.

It turns out Connor is on to something.

There are a lot of fast food joints called Nickies all over the south side,

South suburbs, and even into Northwest Indiana.

But are all of these Nickies part of the same business?

Our old reporter Monica Eng...

Oh, sorry, Monica.

Our former reporter, Monica Eng, originally reported this story in the summer of 2019.

And it got a lot more complicated than we were expecting.

In fact, we had to make two curious city stories just to get to the bottom of it. But we're putting them together for you, and you'll hear from Monica after the break.

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