The story
The first Magic Pan was established by refugees former skiing champion Laszlo Fono and Eva Paulette (Belatini) Fono in 1965 (1965) in a small storefront on Fillmore Street in San Francisco, less than a decade after the couple escaped from Hungary on foot. Two years later, they opened a larger venue in Ghirardelli Square.
The Quaker Oats Company acquired Magic Pan from the Fonos in 1970, and it became the company's primary restaurant chain. Quaker Oats sold the company to an Oakland, California-based company, Bay Bottlers, in 1982.
In 2005, the Magic Pan name was re-introduced by Lettuce Entertain You Enterprises as a fast-food crepe stand in Northbrook, Illinois. This resurrected version of Magic Pan does not have the crepe-making machine used in the original chain. Instead, it uses recreations of the original recipes. The revived chain opened a second location in the food court of the Mall of America near Minneapolis, Minnesota. The Paradies company currently operates Magic Pan in U.S. airports including Denver and Washington National.
From Wikipedia’s article on The Magic Pan, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.4