If you remember the 80s, then you remember eating at Roy Rogers. The fried chicken tenders, the roast beef sandwiches, the fries in gun holsters, the Double R Burgers, and oh yeah……the FIXENS!!!! They were all over the place and held their own quite well with McDonalds and Burger King franchises. And then, like that, they all disappeared with only a few stragglers here and there. Well, what the heck happened?
Well first, to go over a little history on the restaurant chain. They were founded by the Marriott Corporation in the late 1960s. Around their peak between the 70s and 80s, they had around 650 restaurants around the NJ, MD, PA and VA area. However, in 1990 they sold the chain to Hardee’s in a plan to exit the fast food business. They converted any of the non-franchised restaurants into Hardee’s restaurants, but due to a customer revolt, turned them back into Roy Rogers restaurants again. Hardee’s ownership of the Roy Rogers franchise eventually failed because their quality of food was not the same as the original Roy Rogers. Hardee’s eventually sold all of their Roy Rogers locations to McDonalds, Wendy’s and Boston Market. And like that………..they were pretty much gone. But not quite yet.
In 1997 CKE Restaurants (Plamondon) acquired Hardee’s from Imasco, but Imasco held on to the Roy Rogers trademark and franchise system. Plamondon negotiated with Imasco for about three years before a private purchase agreement was reached in 2002. Roy Rogers was relaunched as Roy Rogers Franchise Company, LLC in 2002 when Plamondon Companies bought the trademark and franchise system from Imasco, the former owner of Hardee’s. Plamondon interestingly enough, is owned by Jim Plamondon and Peter Plamondon Jr., the two sons of Peter Plamondon Sr., head of the restaurant division at Marriott when the Roy Rogers brand was created.
Currently the restaurant chain is mainly operated by HMSHost (formerly Host Marriott Services), who owns the couple dozen Roy Rogers found on rest stops on the eastern region. There are only around 18 company owned Roy Rogers while the rest is owned by franchises. It’s kind of a nostalgic and exciting occurrence when one actually finds a stand alone Roy Rogers that isn’t attached to a rest stop of some sort. The company is currently trying to encourage franchisees to open more stores on the northeast region. Roy Rogers has also launched a new website at http://www.royrogersrestaurants.com and also now operate Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube accounts.
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Where have you ran into a Roy Rogers, and is the one you found any good? Finding a Roy Rogers is like a special event these days. I for one, have planned car pools simply to visit a Roy Rogers that we heard existed through rumors, secret messages and carrier pigeons. Let us know where we can find us some “FIXENS”, will ya?