Restaurant icon HoJo's close to disappearing
Down from 850 to only 8 today
BY CLARKE CANFIELD

BANGOR, Maine -- The orange roof is long gone, and the
Simple Simon plaque is history. The famous 28 flavors of
ice cream have dwindled to 16 varieties.

But at least the Howard Johnson name sits atop the building,
which is a lot more than hundreds of one-time Howard
Johnson's eateries can say.  The venerable chain once had
more than 800 restaurants from coast to coast, but these
days you can count them on two hands.

Some fear that HoJo's and its trademark orange roofs, fried
clams and timeless air will soon go the way of the
Studebaker, a victim of modern times and competition. If
that happens, an icon of American dining and one of the
nation's first full-service restaurant chains will disappear.

Waitress Kathe Jewett has watched sadly as other HoJo
restaurants nationwide have been shuttered, torn down or
converted into other restaurants, a fitness center, a gift
shop, a bank and even a car dealership. Jewett, who calls
her customers "dear," started working here fresh out of
high school 39 years ago, and has seen generations pass
through these doors.

"It's a way of life," said Jewett. "Now there are chain
restaurants on every corner."

The decline began after the company was sold to the Imperial
Group, a British conglomerate, 25 years ago, said Walter Mann
of North Haven, Conn., who runs HoJoLand, a Web site devoted
to Howard Johnson's. It was then sold off twice more before
ending up in the hands of Franchise Associates Inc., a
Shelton, Conn., company which has owned it since 1986.

With this month's closing of a HoJo's in Springfield, Vt.,
there are now only eight left in Maine, Connecticut, Michigan,
New Jersey, Maryland and New York, Mann said. The Howard
Johnson's in New York City's Times Square is reportedly going
to close in June.

The future for the chain is unclear. Franchise Associates did
not return several phone calls left on its answering machines.
Its Web site is dated with old information, and an old phone
number and address in Duxbury, Mass.

"It's definitely twilight time for Howard Johnson's," Mann
said.

Howard Deering Johnson started the business that bears his
name in 1925, when he inherited from his father a small soda
fountain outside of Boston.  Customers started flocking his
way after he began serving ice cream with twice the usual
butterfat.

Johnson added other easy-to-fix foods like hot dogs and fried
clams to the menu, and three years later opened the first
Howard Johnson's restaurant.  In the decades to come, the name
spread as hundreds of franchises opened across the country.

The Howard Johnson hotel chain -- which is separate from the
restaurants -- came later. The first motor lodge opened in
1954, and there are still 464 Howard Johnson hotels around.
They are franchised by New York-based Cendant Corp. but are
not affiliated with the restaurants.

At the peak, there were 850 or so Howard Johnson's
restaurants, as well as close to 200 company-owned Ground
Rounds and a couple of dozen Red Coach Grills, according to
Rich Kummerlowe of Spring Hill, Fla. Kummerlowe has a Web
site -- America's Landmark, Under the Orange Roof
(www.autoage.org/) -- that pays tribute to Howard Johnson's,
and has studied the chain as a board member of the Society
for Commercial Archeology, an organization devoted to the
20th-century commercial landscape.

Johnson did for roadside restaurants what Holiday Inn, the
first national lodging chain, did for roadside hotels.
HoJo's is also credited with being one of the first companies
to package its buildings -- the orange roofs, cupolas with
weather vanes, and the Simple Simmon and the Pieman plaques
-- to market its products, much the way McDonald's later used
the golden arches.

Over time, the chain suffered from aging restaurants, a stale
menu, lack of marketing and new ideas, and increased
competition from other chains such as Applebee's, Chili's and
Ruby Tuesday. And one by one, the restaurants began closing
their doors.

If the chain goes under, it will be a loss for generations of
Americans who still have warm and fuzzy memories of the
restaurants, said Ron Nykiel, the founder and president of
the Hospitality Hall of Honor at the University of Houston.
Howard Johnson was inducted posthumously in 1999.

Nykiel remembers as a child piling into the family Buick for
the annual summer vacation drive from New Jersey to Canada,
stopping at Howard Johnson's along the way for hot dogs and
ice cream.  For others, it conjures up blueberry and corn
toastees, salt water taffy and old-fashion waitress uniforms.

"There was no vision, and there was no capital that was
reinvested," he said.

Some others still hold hope for the chain.  After all, other
chains have teetered on the brink and come back stronger
than ever.