Nelson's Old Riverton Store Deli

The deli's regular menu is built around basic sandwich options that have been on the counter for decades — ham, turkey, roast beef, salami, club sandwich, BLT, and various combinations of the same ingredients on different breads. Bread choices typically include white, wheat, sourdough, and sometimes a Kaiser roll. Standard toppings — lettuce, tomato, onion, mustard, mayo, and similar — are all available; the kitchen will build a sandwich to most reasonable specifications without complication.

Beyond the regular sandwich menu, the deli offers daily soup specials during cooler months (chili, vegetable soup, chicken noodle, and similar straightforward options), occasional hot lunch specials, and a small selection of pre-made salads and side options. The hot food program is less central than the cold sandwich counter; most travelers order a sandwich combo rather than a hot meal. Cookies, brownies, chips, and other sweet-and-savory side options are stocked on a rotating basis and round out a typical traveler's lunch order.

Drink options are the standard small-town grocery selection — bottled and fountain sodas, bottled water, iced tea, coffee, and various juices and energy drinks from the cooler. The store does not have a bar program; alcohol is not served at the deli. Coffee is available all day and is the standard small-town drip coffee rather than any espresso program. Cold drinks are pulled from the cooler and counted at the deli register along with the sandwich order.

There is no formal sit-down dining room. The deli is a counter-service operation — you order at the counter, the kitchen prepares the sandwich, and you take the wrapped food and your drink to wherever you prefer to eat. Most travelers eat on the picnic tables outside the front of the store, on the wooden deep front porch in fine weather, or at the small interior tables that the store maintains near the front windows. In poor weather most travelers eat in their car or carry the sandwich onward to eat at the Rainbow Bridge two miles down the road.

The picnic table area in front of the store is the standard recommended eating spot in good weather. The tables are simple wood picnic tables under the open sky, with views of the store's white-clapboard exterior, the Route 66 shield sign, and the surrounding rural Riverton crossroads. The setting is unhurried and pleasant and is the closest thing to a Route 66-themed lunch experience that Kansas's brief stretch of the Mother Road offers.

Carrying the sandwich onward to the Rainbow Bridge is also a popular option. The bridge is two miles southwest of the store and has a small unpaved parking area suitable for a brief lunch stop. Eating a Nelson's sandwich while looking at the 1923 Marsh Arch concrete bridge produces a memorably specific Route 66 lunch experience and is a recommendation that staff at Nelson's will sometimes offer to travelers asking about lunch options.

The deli's practical value is that it solves the actual lunch problem for travelers covering Kansas's Route 66 corridor. The 13.2-mile Kansas stretch has limited food options — Cafe on the Route in Baxter Springs is the only other meaningful restaurant within the corridor, and Angels on the Route in Galena operates Wednesday through Sunday only. Nelson's deli operates six days a week with substantial hours (Monday through Saturday 7am to 6pm, Sunday 9am to 4pm), and it covers breakfast-leaning, lunch, and early-afternoon time slots without the timing constraints of more formal restaurants.

The deli is also practical for travelers on tight schedules. Order-to-pickup time is generally five to ten minutes — substantially faster than any sit-down restaurant — and the entire sandwich-plus-shopping visit can be accomplished in 30 to 45 minutes if needed. Travelers covering the full Route 66 in compressed schedules (the Kansas stretch can be technically traversed in fifteen minutes) often find the deli to be the only practical way to combine a Route 66 lunch with the other corridor stops.

Beyond pure logistics, the deli's contextual value is substantial. Eating lunch inside or in front of a working general store that has operated continuously since 1925 is a meaningfully different experience from eating at a modern highway-exit restaurant. The combination of the historic building, the friendly staff, the wall-covered photograph displays, and the working-grocery character produces a Route 66 lunch experience that travelers tend to remember more vividly than the food itself.

The standard Kansas Route 66 lunch plan: arrive at Nelson's around 11:30am or noon, order at the deli counter, eat on the picnic tables in front (good weather) or carry the sandwich onward to the Rainbow Bridge for a roadside lunch (15-20 minutes' carry). The combination of Nelson's-plus-bridge produces a Riverton lunch stop of roughly 60 to 90 minutes total and positions the traveler well for an afternoon continuation to Baxter Springs (seven miles south).

For travelers with more time, the Riverton lunch can extend to a full midday stop. Eat a relaxed lunch at the picnic tables, browse the souvenir selection inside the store, photograph the building exterior and the Route 66 shield sign, drive the two miles to the Rainbow Bridge for photography, and walk across the bridge before continuing the day. The expanded Riverton stop runs 90 minutes to two hours and works well as the corridor's central anchor.

For travelers based in Joplin, Missouri (ten miles east) — the standard overnight base for travelers covering this tri-state Route 66 stretch — the Nelson's deli is a viable morning or midday destination on its own. Joplin has more substantial dinner options for the evening; Nelson's covers the daytime Route 66 lunch slot. Many Joplin-based travelers run a half-day plan that includes Nelson's for lunch, the Rainbow Bridge for afternoon photography, and the Galena or Baxter Springs stops on either side of Riverton.