Our History

Fresh facts about our storied establishment

Sioux City residents Vincent and Marie Calligan had owned other businesses together, including a local tavern, but opening a restaurant was a new adventure they wanted to try – and in July 1955, they opened Tastee Inn & Out at 2610 Gordon Drive in Sioux City’s Greenville Neighborhood.

The couple dove into restaurant ownership with equal parts optimism, drive, and a genuine desire to give their community a place to grab good food and go. Marie required nothing less than perfection when it came to preparing the recipes for Tastee’s iconic favorites, setting a standard that still holds true today: the beef should always be fresh, never frozen. Our meat sauces and chili are made from scratch daily. And cheap ingredients will never be accepted as substitutions.

They served loose meat, but they ran a tight ship.

After the success of the original Tastee Inn & Out on Gordon Drive, the Calligans opened a second location in 1957, on the west side of Sioux City at 1902 Court Street. When the couple’s three daughters were old enough, they started pitching in with the family business too – especially their middle daughter, Jean, who took the opportunity to get an education unlike any other, in math, marketing, equipment management, and more.

When Vince passed away in 1972, Jean’s hands-on experience prepared her to take over management and ownership of Tastee. She worked side by side with Marie until her mother’s death in 2009. When Jean passed away as well in 2021, her daughter Joye Levy – who also had the opportunity to work at Tastee as a kid – took over operations, along with her husband, Scott.

Since taking the Tastee reigns, Joye’s goal has been to uphold her family’s beloved legacy and honor the Calligan broads who went before her. All of the meat is still fresh – never frozen. The sauces are still made from scratch every day. Tastee has never been a warming house, and it never will be.

Every day, hundreds of pounds of fresh ground beef is cooked and blended with a special Tastee sauce to make our famous loose meat sandwiches. Onions are pedaled, blanched and breaded to make our delicious onion chips. Chili and meat sauce cook on the stove.

Every day, neighbors from Sioux City and visitors from across the country stop by our Gordon Drive location – drawn in by our famous neon sign.

Every day, real, dedicated people take their time making the same delicious food we’ve been serving for 68 years, and we wouldn’t have it any other way. So stop by, drive up, and get some good food to go.