Posted on 06/11/2022 10:42:10 PM PDT by Impala64ssa
It all started when Howard Deering Johnson, who grew up in the town of Quincy, Mass., purchased a drugstore and began peddling homemade ice cream. His dessert became so popular, he then opened an ice cream stand on Wollaston Beach, where, legend has it, he sold as many as 14,000 cones in a single day. In 1929, the first Howard Johnson's restaurant opened in Quincy Square.
Fast forward to 2022, and what was the largest restaurant chain in the United States throughout the 1960s and 1970s—with more than 1,000 locations—is now closing the doors to its last remaining location. According to Eater, the 70-year-old establishment in New York State's tourist-packed village of Lake George did not open its doors during Memorial Day weekend and seems to have been shuttered since March.
The beloved restaurant chain began to take a downturn in the late 1970s. The company was first sold to Imperial Group, one of Britain's largest companies at the time, for $630 million in 1979. Six years later, Imperial sold Howard Johnson's to "rival restaurant empire" Marriott for $314 million. After that, Howard Johnson's locations began to disappear, and by the turn of the century, there were fewer than a dozen Howard Johnson's restaurants left standing.
The lease for the Lake George location is now listed for a mere $10 and is described as a "rare business opportunity to lease a prime piece of real estate in the heart of Lake George."
Care to reminisce? Look for a group called HoJoLand on Facebook. Its description: "A group for fans of HoJoLand.com, a website dedicated to an American icon, Howard Johnson's Restaurants and Ice Cream Shops. Long live the Orange Roof!"
The most recent post in that group reads: "Lake George is officially dead. Plastic tables and chairs removed. All memorabilia removed. Cobwebs on the door."
Then come the nostalgia-fueled comments, like "Had several great meals there on my honeymoon in 1963" and "Summer 1983. Nothing but happy memories for me and Howard Johnson's."
That sucks. Kinda expected it to always be around.
Early victim of wokeness. Their name irrated rich white liberals who took offense for a minority that didn’t seem care one way or the other about the name.
Worked the counter in a Hoio on I-90 the summer of 1964. Gave me nightmares. I’ve never ever been mean to a restaurant server as a result.
I do believe so.
mint chocolate chip !!
On road trips with parents, always looked forward to stopping at on on the new interstates.
They did seem to be an east coast thing though. If they had them in the western US, do not recall seeing one. And my dad was a fool for road trips.
HoJos.
Remember the downtown Milwaukee one during the 1980s.
Ah. I wouldn’t have caught it anyway, since I had never heard of the restaurant..
I will have to pay closer attention next time I watch it ;)
Did you not notice that they were pretty much toast twenty years ago?
The hotel chain by that name is doing well enough, it’s the formerly related restaurant chain that died.
Interesting - thanks for sharing.
Looking closer online I see there isn’t a restaurant attached to it. Just a hotel. Too bad.
Wasn’t it part of a hotel?
We had a Howard Johnsons in Concord.
But when it came to ice cream, it couldn’t compete with Kimball’s in Westford.
The Howard Johnson’s in my area was attached to a hotel. It was like a Denny’s type restaurant.
The motels still exist but the Howard Johnson’s restaurants are no more.
Cracker Barrel is the successor restaurant chain to Howard Johnson’s for the middle class. It too will someday decline into oblivion and be replaced by another restaurant chain.
Under capitalism the cycle of creative destruction is essential for a healthy economy. Innovators create new concepts (a better mousetrap). The company grows rapidly and continues to innovate. The founder sells, out, retires, or dies. Professional management takes over, builds a bureaucracy, and innovation wanes. Risk aversion sets in and the quality of product suffers due to aggressive cost cutting implemented to increase profits as sales flatten and drop. Customers look for alternatives and another entrepreneur visionary comes along to take market share from the dying dinosaur.
Competition ensures the firms that cannot adapt, and no longer serve a purpose die and are replaced. Contrast with government which continues to grow its bureaucracy when services and efficiency decline. It’s customer suffer because it is a monopoly and it has the power to steal resources from its customers through taxation.
I never had one close enough to me to eat there. Oh well.
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