a meal in itself.” From the beginning, Yancey was a fixture at the original Fatburger, where customers, who included entertainers such as Redd Foxx and Ray Charles, could custom-order their burgers.
"[1]“Yancey was very hands-on in the business, sometimes working 16-hour shifts to ensure things ran smoothly, and burgers were cooked to perfection” Yancey sold her Fatburger company to an investment group in 1990, but retained control of the original property on Western Avenue.
She established a $1.7-million endowment at City of Hope National Medical Center in Duarte in 1986 for research into sickle-cell anemia.
This was in fulfillment of a promise to her 22-year-old grandson, Duran Farrell, who had died of the disease three years earlier.
On January 26, 2008, Yancey died at the age of ninety-six of pneumonia at the Olympia Medical Center in Los Angeles, California.