Howard Johnson's (Johnsonverse)

Howard Johnson's is a chain operating in the lodging and restaurant industries. It has been owned by Johnson Industries since 1968.

Early years
In 1925, Howard Deering Johnson borrowed $2,000 to buy and operate a small corner pharmacy in Wollaston, a neighborhood in Quincy, Massachusetts. Johnson was surprised to find it easy to pay back the money lent to him, after discovering his recently installed soda fountain had become the busiest part of his drugstore. Eager to ensure that his store would remain successful, Johnson decided to come up with a new ice cream recipe. Some sources say the recipe was based on his mother's homemade ice creams and desserts, while others say that it was from a local German immigrant, who either sold or gave Johnson the ice cream recipe. Regardless, the new recipe made the ice cream more flavorful due to an increased content of butterfat. Eventually Johnson came up with 28 flavors of ice cream. Johnson is quoted as saying, "I thought I had every flavor in the world. That '28' (flavors of ice cream) became my trademark."

Throughout the summers of the late 1920s, Johnson opened up concession stands on beachfront property along the coast of Massachusetts. The stands sold soft drinks, hot dogs, and ice cream. Each stand proved to be successful. With his success becoming more noticeable every year, Johnson convinced local bankers to lend him enough money to operate a sit-down restaurant. Negotiations were made and, toward the end of the decade, the first Howard Johnson's restaurant opened in Quincy. The first Howard Johnson's restaurant featured fried clams, baked beans, chicken pot pies, frankfurters, ice cream, and soft drinks.

The first Howard Johnson's restaurant and Howard Johnson's company received an incredible break in 1929, owing to an unusual set of circumstances: The mayor of nearby Boston, Malcolm Nichols, banned the planned production of Eugene O'Neill's play, Strange Interlude, in the city of Boston. Rather than fight the mayor, the Theatre Guild moved the production to Quincy. The five-hour play was presented in two parts with a dinner break. The first Howard Johnson's restaurant was near the theater; hundreds of influential Bostonians flocked to the restaurant. Through word of mouth, more Americans became familiar with the Howard Johnson's company.

Expansion in the 1930s and 1940s
Johnson wanted to expand his company, but the stock market crash of 1929 prevented him from doing so. After waiting a few years and maintaining his business, Johnson was able to persuade an acquaintance in 1932 to open a second Howard Johnson's restaurant in Orleans, Massachusetts. The second restaurant was franchised and not company-owned. This was one of America's first franchising agreements.

By the end of 1936, there were 39 more franchised restaurants, creating a total of 41 Howard Johnson's restaurants. By 1939, there were 107 Howard Johnson's restaurants along various American East Coast highways, generating revenues of $10.5 million. In less than 14 years, Johnson directed a franchise network of over 10,000 employees with 170 restaurants, many serving 1.5 million people a year.

The unique icons of orange roofs, cupolas, and weather vanes on Howard Johnson properties helped patrons identify the chain's restaurants and motels. The restaurant's trademark Simple Simon and the Pieman logo was created by artist John Alcott in the 1930s.

By 1944, only 12 Howard Johnson's restaurants remained in business. The effects of war rationing had crippled the company. Johnson managed to maintain his business by serving commissary food to war workers and U.S. Army recruits. When the Pennsylvania Turnpike (1940), and later the Ohio Turnpike, New Jersey Turnpike and Connecticut Turnpike were built, Johnson bid for and won exclusive rights to serve drivers at service station turnoffs through the turnpike systems.

In the process of recovering from these losses, in 1947 the Howard Johnson's company began construction of 200 new restaurants throughout the American Southeast and Midwest. By 1951, the sales of the Howard Johnson's company totaled $115 million.

Entering the hotel business
By 1954, there were 400 Howard Johnson's restaurants in 32 states, about 10% of which were extremely profitable company-owned turnpike restaurants; the rest were franchises. This was one of the first nationwide restaurant chains.

While many places sold "fried clams", they were whole, which was not universally accepted by the American dining public. Howard Johnson popularized Soffron Brothers Clam Company's fried clam strips: the "foot" of hard-shelled sea clams. They became popular to eat in this fashion throughout the country.

In 1954, the company opened the first Howard Johnson's motor lodge in Savannah, Georgia. The company employed architects Rufus Nims and Karl Koch to oversee the design of the rooms and gate lodge. Nims had previously worked with the company, designing restaurants. The restaurant's trademark Simple Simon and the Pieman was now joined by a lamplighter character in the firm's marketing of its motels. According to cultural historians, the chain became synonymous with travel among American motorists and vacationers in part because of Johnson's ubiquitous outdoor advertising displays.

In 1959, Howard Deering Johnson, who had founded and managed the company since 1925, turned control over to his son, then 26-year-old Howard Brennan Johnson. The elder Johnson observed his son's running of the company until his death in 1972 at the age of 75.

The Howard Johnson's Company went public in 1961; there were 605 restaurants, 265 company-owned and 340 franchised, as well as 88 franchised Howard Johnson's motor lodges in 32 states and the Bahamas.

In 1961, Johnson hired New York chefs Pierre Franey and Jacques Pépin to oversee food development at the company's main commissary in Brockton, Massachusetts. Franey and Pépin developed recipes for the company's signature dishes that could be flash frozen and delivered across the country, guaranteeing a consistent product.

Segregation and desegregation
While the landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision by the United States Supreme Court in 1954 struck down segregation in public schools, segregation and maintenance of whites-only public facilities continued in other domains, including the Howard Johnson chain. Segregation in Howard Johnson's restaurants even provoked an international crisis in 1957, when a Howard Johnson eatery in Dover, Delaware refused service to Komla Agbeli Gbedemah, the finance minister of Ghana, prompting a public apology from President Dwight D. Eisenhower. The Congress of Racial Equality, or CORE, was instrumental in organizing protests and sit-ins at Howard Johnson locations in multiple states.

The city of Durham, North Carolina, became especially notable as a focus for action against segregated restaurants and hotels, including Howard Johnson's. On 12 August 1962, attorney and civil rights activist Floyd McKissick initiated the first of multiple rallies and demonstrations against segregated establishments in Durham, including the Howard Johnson's restaurant on Chapel Hill Boulevard, culminating in multiple protests on 18–20 May 1963 resulting in mass arrests as well as an eventual rapprochement with the city government. Future senator and presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, while a student at the University of Chicago in 1962, helped organize a picket of a Howard Johnson's location in Cicero, Illinois, during his time as a student activist for CORE.

Change in ownership
On December 13, 1968, Johnson Industries, which had bought McDonald's only a day before, bought out Howard Johnson's after months of negotiations. The deal included the restaurant chain, the motor lodge chain, and the frozen food line. Then-CEO of Johnson, Sheldon Johnson, has been quoted as saying, "The chain will be better off with us." Sheldon's wife, Lucy, took control of HoJo's.

Johnson brought new menu items to cater to the changing public, to go with an ad campaign that was ahead of its time, with Howard, played by Gene Wilder, promoting HoJo's products while going through various situations such as traveling, swimming, and even running during the torch relay before the 1984 Olympic games. The ad campaign was widely praised, with the campaign running until 1999, and even then, Gene Wilder continued voicing characters until his death in 2016. Howard Johnson's bought the Ayds company in 1980, and introduced the Howard Johnson's brand to the candies in 1982.

By the late 1970s, the Howard Johnson's empire consisted of over 1,000 restaurants and more than 500 motor lodges as well as vending and turnpike operations and a manufacturing and distribution system.

Continued success
On June 1, 1981, when Phil Stacker bought Johnson Industries, Johnson Foods was kept autonomous, with its new CEO, Bryan Fenton Stacker, Phil's brother, coming up with new ideas, most famously the Deli Baker Ice Cream Maker, Bumbershoot's, and Paddywack's, to go with Ground Round and Red Coach Grill. The chain kept its Howard ad campaigns, along with Simple Simon and the Pieman (Lamplighter for motor lodges), among other changes.

When Phil Stacker resigned from Johnson on October 10, 1991, Sheldon Jr.'s wife Tammy Jo took control of the company, and continued introducing new menu items, along with special promotions such as a 29th flavor of ice cream for one month every year, and introducing a new ad campaign in 1999 featuring an animated Simple Simon in a live-action environment, a concept similar to WBC's Hybrid series. The commercials feature Nancy Cartwright as Simple Simon, Frank Welker as Simon's dog Brennan (named after Howard B. Johnson's middle name), Rob Paulsen as the Pieman, Rodger Bumpass as the Lamplighter, and Hynden Walch as Simon's girlfriend Smart Simone. Other voices in a large cast include Tom Kenny, Amos Crawley, Grey Griffin, Tara Strong, B.J. Ward, Maurice LaMarche, Mike Pollock, Dan Castellaneta, Mark Hamill, Tommy Wiseau, Greg Sestero, H. Jon Benjamin, Dan Mintz, John Roberts, Kristen Schaal, Eugene Mirman, Larry Murphy, Ross Bagdasarian Jr., Janice Karman, Jill Talley, Sarah Silverman, Jane Lynch, Jack McBrayer, Richard Karn, Seth MacFarlane, Seth Green, Carey Means, Max Charles, Collin Dean, Dave Willis, Dana Snyder, Alanna Ubach, Wink Martindale, Seth Green, Stuart Stone, Alex Borstein, Kevin Murphy, Trace Beaulieu, Frank Conniff, Bill Corbett, Joel Hodgson, Mike Nelson, J. Elvis Weinstein, Mary Jo Pehl, Tress MacNeille, Trey Parker, Doug Walker, Pamela Adlon, Charlie Adler, Jess Harnell, and even "Weird Al" Yankovic, in addition to Gene Wilder and Adam West until their deaths in 2016 and 2017, respectively. Guest characters have included Princess Elsa, Anna, Shinji Ikari, Asuka Langely Sohryu, Rei Ayanami, Fred Flintstone, Chocodile, Tom Servo, Ansi Molina, Olly Timbers, Saraline Timbers, Ho-Kago Tea Time, Harvey Beaks, Ren Hoek, Stimpy Cat, CatDog, Hank Hill, Bobby Hill, Richie Rich, Gloria Glad, Homer Simpson, Arnold Shortman, Gerald Johansson, Helga Pataki, The Warner Brothers and the Warner Sister, Pinky, Brain, Bugs Bunny, Lincoln Loud, Mickey Mouse, Robin, The Powerpuff Girls, the Guardians of the Galaxy, Keroro, and Kermit the Frog, among others, mainly for free action figures in kids' meals to promote their respective franchises. The ad campaign was just as praised as the previous one, and also reveals Simple Simon's last name: Smith.

Since 2010, Belle Armstrong has assumed control of Howard Johnson's. Armstrong has continued the company's success, with opening more locations, continuing the Simple Simon ad campaign, and introducing more new concepts such as Howard Johnson's-branded popcorn, and bringing back Howard Johnson's Cola (with a new formula) among others.

Today, Howard Johnson's has over 75,000 restaurants and motor lodges between them. The chain continues to contribute to Johnson's fortunes, and has resulted in pop culture references, including a Howard Johnson's appearing on an episode of Mad Men, songs written about the chain, and Howard Johnson's sketches on various shows such as Saturday Night Live, MadTV, and Robot Chicken.

Howard Johnson's also sponsored Dale Earnhardt's No. 3 Chevrolet from 1987 to 2001, Kevin Harvick's No. 29 Chevrolet from 2001 to 2013, and Austin Dillon's No. 3 Chevrolet since 2014. The chain is also the title sponsor of the NASCAR Howard Johnson's SUV Series, and the official Ice Cream of the NFL, in addition to sponsoring the Olympic games since 1970.