Across the midcentury landscape, the pointy blue weather vane and the bright orange roof was a universal signal for one thing – Howard Johnson’s. Even before people started their travels to the summer town, the doors of this Americana institution closed one its final freestanding location, but why did this once successful brand disappear?
En route to the vacation destination Lake George New York, the last and actually running Howard Johnson’s closed even before the summer season kicked off. Multiple factors have been making it hard for the restaurant industry, but this standing relic of Americana just couldn’t hold on. During an interview in 2017, they were reporting a financial struggle, most of the money was coming from buses making rest stops between Canada and New York, because the locals nor the tourists were hitting the place up like they used to.
It never used to be this way. With a little money and a lot of inherited debt, Howard Johnson took the risk and bought a pharmacy in Quincy, Massachusetts, selling some food (like their famous hot dogs called frankforts) and more importantly, ice cream. He experimented with the creamy iced confection, doubling the amount of butterfat for a softer, less rigid texture. The experiment was a huge success, and the restaurant became famous for its decadent twenty-eight flavors.
With strategic franchising near highways and thruways and a unique color scheme, Howard Johnson’s became famous during an era of automobile road trips. By the 1970s, there were over a thousand Howard Johnson’s franchises across the US. But it was also in this era that problems couldn’t be fixed because once the gas shortage and stagflation hit the mid-1970s, the over-expanded franchise hit too many roadblocks.
So what really caused the downfall? It’s better to ask what didn’t impact the company! In the 1970s more franchises had entered the playing field, offering cheaper food at a quicker pace, and the road trip had all but decreased to all-time lows.
When Howard Johnson’s son entered the business, his son used the company’s profits to buy out competitors and cut costs within HoJos, seeing a decrease in training and food quality. These poor strategies, coupled with over-expansion and overspending, led to the company being bought and sold several times. When franchisee contracts expired, they simply weren’t renewed. The only open ones were converted into hotels by its buyer Mariott (who then sold it all to Wyndham later on). Howard Johnson’s, considered to be one of the biggest, earliest successful franchises and nicknamed the host of the highways, became an archeological relic of the past by the 1990s.
You may be able to find some Howard Johnson’s attached to a few hotels, but you won’t find another restaurant. The Lake George location was the last freestanding Howard Johnson’s restaurant not connected to a hotel. Now vacant, the property is still up for sale.
Do you have memories of going to this restaurant?