Howard Johnson's

• 1. Introduction

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  Howard Johnson's served more meals outside the home during the 1960s than any other company or organization except the United States Army. That ranking is remarkable for a business that began with one man and a corner drugstore. For decades the name was a familiar sight on American roads, and it shaped how a traveling family expected to eat and sleep. Today the ice cream and the frozen foods are no longer made, the restaurants have disappeared, and only a hotel brand still carries the name. How did a small soda fountain grow into a chain that fed a nation on the move? What did it teach the businesses that followed? And how does a company that large shrink until one lone restaurant is left to claim its name?

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• 2. Soda Fountain Beginnings

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  In 1925, Howard Deering Johnson borrowed $2,000 to buy a small corner pharmacy in Wollaston, a neighborhood of Quincy, Massachusetts. He had expected the debt to weigh on him. Instead, the soda fountain he had just installed became the busiest corner of the store, and the loan was easy to repay.

  Johnson wanted to keep that momentum, so he set out to create a better ice cream. Accounts disagree about the recipe's origin. Some say it grew out of his mother's homemade ice creams and desserts. Others say a local German immigrant sold or gave it to him. Either way, the higher butterfat made the ice cream noticeably more flavorful. Johnson eventually offered 28 flavors, and he was quoted as saying, "I thought I had every flavor in the world. That '28' (flavors of ice cream) became my trademark."

  During the summers of the late 1920s, Johnson opened beachfront concession stands along the Massachusetts coast. They sold soft drinks, hot dogs and ice cream, and every one succeeded. Local bankers, watching his rising fortunes, lent him money for a family-style restaurant. It opened in Quincy toward the end of the decade, serving fried clams, baked beans, chicken pot pies, frankfurters, ice cream and soft drinks.

  A piece of civic drama gave that first restaurant its big break in 1929. Malcolm Nichols, the mayor of Boston, banned Eugene O'Neill's play Strange Interlude from his city. The Theatre Guild declined to fight him and moved the production to the Wollaston Theatre in Quincy. Because the five-hour play ran in two parts with a dinner break, hundreds of influential Bostonians flocked to the restaurant near the theater. Word of mouth carried the name well beyond Quincy. The stock market crash of that same year, however, would keep Johnson from expanding for several years.

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• 3. Highway Empire

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  In 1935, Johnson persuaded an acquaintance to open a second Howard Johnson's in Orleans, Massachusetts. This one was franchised instead of company-owned, making it one of the first franchising agreements in America. By the end of 1936-39 more franchised restaurants had joined, for a total of 41. By 1939 there were 107 restaurants along East Coast highways, earning revenues of $10.5 million.

  When America entered World War II, the chain had 200 restaurants. By 1944 only 12 were still in business, because rationing had crippled the company. Johnson survived by serving commissary food to war workers and U.S. Army recruits.

  The Pennsylvania Turnpike opened in 1940, and the Ohio, New Jersey and Connecticut turnpikes followed. Johnson bid for and won exclusive rights to serve drivers at the service station turnoffs along these roads. In 1947 the company began building 200 new restaurants across the American Southeast and Midwest. Sales reached $115 million by 1951.

  By 1954 there were 400 Howard Johnson's restaurants in 32 states, and about 10% of them were extremely profitable company-owned turnpike locations. The menu had a signature item by then. Many places sold whole fried clams, which not every diner welcomed, so Howard Johnson popularized fried clam strips from Soffron Brothers Clam Company, cut from the foot of the hard-shelled sea clam.

  That same year, the company opened its first motor lodge in Savannah, Georgia. Architects Rufus Nims and Karl Koch oversaw the design of the rooms and the gate lodge, and Nims had already designed restaurants for the firm. Cultural historians say the chain became synonymous with travel for motorists and vacationers partly because of its ubiquitous outdoor advertising.

  In 1959, the founder handed control to his son, Howard Brennan Johnson, who was 26. The elder Johnson watched his son run the company until his own death in 1972 at the age of 75. The company went public in 1961 with 605 restaurants, of which 265 were company-owned and 340 franchised. It also had 88 franchised motor lodges in 32 states and The Bahamas. That same year, Johnson made a hire aimed at a problem every chain faces, which is keeping the food the same everywhere.

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• 4. Orange Roofs and Commissaries

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  Orange roofs, cupolas and weather vanes marked every Howard Johnson property, so a driver could pick out a restaurant or motel from the road. The trademark Simple Simon and the Pieman logo was created in the 1930s by artist John Alcott, and Charles Pizzano sculpted the fiberglass signs. When the motels arrived, a lamplighter character joined the pair in the company's marketing.

  Dorothy May Kinnicutt Parish, known as Sister Parish, was a wealthy socialite who started a decorating business in the 1930s. Johnson hired her to decorate the restaurant he built in Somerville, New Jersey. She later told a reporter from The New York Times, "I dressed the waitresses in aqua, did the walls in aqua, I made the placemats in aqua. I guess I must have thought it was quite chic, but I haven't done a thing in aqua since." The quote appears in Anthony Mitchell Sammarco's A History of Howard Johnson's.

  In 1961, Johnson hired the New York chefs Pierre Franey and Jacques Pépin to oversee food development at the main commissary in Brockton, Massachusetts. They created recipes for signature dishes that could be flash frozen and delivered across the country. That guaranteed a consistent product. Sending frozen food from regional commissaries to the branches also reduced cost, and later fast food chains used the same system more fully.

  Paul Freedman wrote that "Howard Johnson's influence is most apparent in two innovations: its pioneering use of franchising and its adaptation to the American highway." He argued that fast food chains improved on the highway model by specializing in "one or two items." Their customers could get food quickly and eat it in a plain restaurant, or even in their cars. A chain with this much reach meant that its dining rooms could not avoid the nation's conflicts, as the company learned in 1957.

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• 5. Lines at the Counter

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  In 1957, a Howard Johnson's eatery in Dover, Delaware, refused service to Komla Agbeli Gbedemah, the finance minister of Ghana. The refusal provoked an international crisis, and President Dwight D. Eisenhower offered a public apology. The Supreme Court's Brown v. Board of Education decision had struck down school segregation in 1954. Whites-only public facilities nonetheless continued elsewhere, including at Howard Johnson's. The Congress of Racial Equality, or CORE, helped organize protests and sit-ins at locations in multiple states.

  Durham, North Carolina, became a focus of action against segregated restaurants and hotels. On the 12th of August 1962, attorney and activist Floyd McKissick launched the first of several rallies against segregated establishments there. One target was the Howard Johnson's on Chapel Hill Boulevard. The campaign culminated in protests from the 18th to the 20th of May 1963, which brought mass arrests and an eventual rapprochement with the city government. Far from Durham, a University of Chicago student named Bernie Sanders helped organize picketing of a Howard Johnson's in Cicero, Illinois, as a CORE activist in 1962.

  By the 7th of December 1962, the company had issued a press statement opposing segregation in its restaurants. It said, "Where it has been possible to change the operation of our company-operated restaurants in the South to conform to our national policy of service without discrimination, this has been done." The letter was written together with CORE and the NAACP, and it praised both groups. It agreed with their view that segregation was "not defensible."

  By the 1960s, the restaurants also had a reputation for welcoming LGBTQ customers, especially around New York. On the 21st of April 1966, Dick Leitsch, Craig Rodwell and John Timmins of the Mattachine Society, an early gay rights group, visited the Greenwich Village Howard Johnson's for a "Sip-In." They were protesting New York liquor laws that kept bars from serving gay patrons. The restaurant served them drinks without incident. They were later refused service at Julius' Bar, an outcome that eventually led to changes in the laws. In the late 1960s, the activist Marsha P. Johnson took the surname Johnson from the Howard Johnson's restaurant on 42nd Street.

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• 6. Families and Hard Times

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  The Springfield, New Jersey, restaurant once mailed 10,000 birthday cards in a single year, and it reported a 50 percent return from the offer. Children joined a birthday club in advance, and the card could be redeemed for a free meal, a cake, and in some locations balloons and lollipops. The rest of the family paid regular prices. The 28 flavors and modest meal prices drew families, and the company kept adding child-friendly touches.

  Children's menus were a staple. Industrial designer John Alcott's firm made menus that doubled as entertainment, including maps of the United States and a guide to the metric system. One could even be turned into a mask by adding string at home. A contest rewarded anyone who proved with a check-off coupon that they had sampled all 28 ice cream flavors, with a free cone.

  By 1975, the company had more than 1,000 restaurants and more than 500 motor lodges in 42 states and Canada. That was its peak. The oil embargo of 1973 had hurt, since 85% of revenue came from travelers who could no longer afford long trips. The company's model of pre-made food, high-quality ingredients and traditional dining rooms was also costly next to McDonald's, which designed its products and restaurants around families with younger children. The chain's private-label "Hojo Cola" disappointed customers who preferred Coca-Cola or Pepsi.

  Two incidents at a property in the New Orleans Central Business District, within 18 months of each other, added to the damage. In July 1971, two irate guests who had been ejected set a fire that killed six people. In January 1973, Mark Essex, a former Black Panther, used the hotel roof as a sniper's perch during a siege that lasted all day. He killed three police officers, including Deputy Superintendent Louis Sirgo, along with the hotel's general manager, its assistant general manager, and a Virginia couple on a belated honeymoon. He also wounded police officers, firefighters and citizens.

  On the 8th of November 1974, singer and actress Connie Francis was raped at the Howard Johnson's Lodge on the Jericho Turnpike in Jericho, New York. The attacker was never found. She sued the chain over its lapse in security and won a judgment of $2.5 million, one of the largest of its kind at the time, which led to reforms in hotel security. Francis suffered severe depression and was a recluse for seven years, returning to public life in 1981.

  H. B. Johnson tried to cut costs by serving cheaper food and employing fewer people, but patrons judged the new restaurants and lodges unfavorably against what they remembered. He also launched HoJo Campgrounds, 3 Penny Inns, Deli Baker Ice Cream Maker and Chatt's. All failed. Earlier concepts had mixed results. H. D. Johnson bought the Wayland Red Coach Grill in the 1930s as the model for an upscale steakhouse chain. Red Coach Grills never earned enough, and the last 15 were sold in 1983 to a company executive who closed them. Ground Round, launched in 1969, succeeded and raised company profits, though it was not a Howard Johnson's restaurant.

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• 7. Changing Hands

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  In 1979, Johnson accepted a bid of more than $630 million from Imperial Group PLC of London, England. Imperial received 1,040 restaurants, of which 75% were company-owned, and 520 motor lodges, of which 75% were franchised. In 1981 Imperial recruited G. Michael Hostage to replace Johnson as chief executive. Hostage ran Continental Baking Company and had been an executive vice president at Marriott Corporation.

  After four years, despite progress on a turnaround, Imperial reversed course and decided to sell. It declined Hostage's proposal to lead a leveraged buyout. Instead, it hired Goldman Sachs, which with Hostage's help sold the company to Marriott in 1986. In a contemporaneous deal, Marriott sold the motor lodge business and the Howard Johnson trademark to Prime Motor Inns, a New Jersey company.

  Marriott wanted the company-owned restaurants for their real estate. It already owned Big Boy and Roy Rogers restaurants, and in 1982 it had acquired Host International, which operated highway rest stops. Many Howard Johnson sites sat in prime highway locations that could be converted to Big Boy or fast food banners. Marriott demolished many of the company-owned restaurants or turned them into Bob's Big Boy restaurants, and only the franchised ones were left untouched.

  Prime Motor Inns was an existing franchisee with 63 motels. It sold off its assets and ceased operations in 1990 after weak hotel and real estate markets. People tied to the lodges formed the Howard Johnson Acquisition Corporation and won the rights to run them. They renamed it Howard Johnson International Incorporated, a subsidiary of Hospitality Franchise Systems, which merged with others to form Cendant. When Cendant split in 2006, the hotels went to Wyndham Worldwide.

  Under Cendant and Wyndham, the chain became a place for franchise conversions, meaning independent motels that were renovated and added for access to a national name and reservation system. Because they were not built as Howard Johnson sites, they lacked distinctive architecture, and some had no restaurant at all. The brand ranged from limited-service motels to full-service properties with concierges and business centers. A "Rise 'N' Dine" continental breakfast appeared at some economy locations, and the price tiers were abolished by 2015. As of May 2024, Howard Johnson had 280 branded properties, mostly in the United States and China. Fewer than 130 hotels remain in the United States.

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• 8. Last One Standing

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  In 1986, franchised restaurant owners who feared elimination banded together as Franchise Associates Incorporated, or FAI. Marriott gave FAI the right to operate and maintain the restaurants. In 1987, FAI chairman George Carter said, "We have the concept, but it desperately needs to be modernized, internally and externally. Howard Johnson was allowed to become tired and stale." FAI lacked the money to expand or revamp the brand. Apart from one ice cream parlor in Puerto Rico, it never opened a new restaurant.

  A restaurant in Canton, Massachusetts, was remodeled in 1990 as a prototype for a new era. The concept failed, and the prototype closed in the spring of 2000. The chain revamped 25% of its menu and created new signage, but it kept losing ground to mass-market fast food. By March 1995, FAI's official directory listed just 84 restaurants in the United States and Canada. By 2005 fewer than eight survived, and FAI ceased operations that year.

  In 2006, Cendant sold the restaurant rights to La Mancha Group LLC, which proposed an aggressive expansion that never materialized. After the Waterbury, Connecticut, restaurant became The Brass House Restaurant in April 2007, only three locations remained. The branded frozen foods line ended after Fairfield Farms Kitchens shut its Brockton plant in 2006 and America's Kitchen of Atlanta closed in May 2008.

  The restaurant in Lake George, New York, was where television chef Rachael Ray once worked as a teenager. In 2013, Wyndham, which had taken over the restaurant rights as well as the hotels, proposed reviving select ice cream flavors, a new logo and a facelift. It carried out retro-inspired room renovations, but scrapped most other plans, including those for food and restaurants.

  On the 10th of January 2015, the Lake George restaurant reopened under John Larock as the "Lake George Family Restaurant" after a lease transfer, using a grandfather clause to keep the Howard Johnson's name. The Lake Placid restaurant closed on the 31st of March 2015. On the 6th of September 2016, the Bangor restaurant closed. It was the last continuously operating restaurant from the original chain.

  Lake George billed itself as "The Last One Standing," but its authenticity was questioned because of a dissimilar menu and many negative reviews. It had no kitchen staff formerly tied to the chain, and no official connection with Wyndham or FAI. The property went up for sale in January 2017. On the 12th of October 2017, Larock was arrested and later convicted of sexually harassing multiple female employees, and he began a six-month jail sentence on the 31st of October 2018. The restaurant opened only sporadically before closing permanently in March 2022.

  Back in Wollaston, where the story began, the company's Candy Factory and executive offices were bought in the late 1990s by Eastern Nazarene College. The college renovated them into the Adams Executive Center.

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