Howard Johnson's (Johnsonverse)

Howard Johnson's (commonly shortened to HoJo's) is an American chain of restaurants, hotels and motels located primarily in the United States and Canada, though it also has locations in many other countries worldwide, and a brand of Johnson Foods for its restaurants and Continental Hotels for its inns. It also has a line of frozen foods and ice cream that is sold in supermarkets and grocery stores. Founded by Howard Deering Johnson, it is one of the largest restaurant chain in the U.S., with more than 25,000 combined company-owned and franchised outlets, as well as one of the largest lodging chains, with over 5,000 motels and hotels as of December 31, 2021.

Since its inception, Howard Johnson's has been well-known for its 28 flavors of ice cream,

Early years
In 1925, Howard Deering Johnson (unrelated to the Johnson family) 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 Johnson's buyout of the company in 1967.

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, 1967, Johnson Industries bought out The Howard Johnson Company after months of negotiations. The deal included the restaurant chain, the motor lodge chain, and the frozen food line. The then-CEO of Johnson, Sheldon Johnson, has been quoted as saying, "Fifty years from now, HoJo's could've been decimated". Under Johnson's ownership, new menu items were created to cater to the changing public; when Johnson acquired the Ayds company in 1980, the brand was renamed to Diet HJ in 1982 to distance it from the then-novel AIDS disease (it would be renamed back to Ayds in 2017) Concept '65 was also made more prominent, and is still in use in high-volume locations to this day, with a smaller version used for standard restaurants since 1969.

By the late 1970s, the Howard Johnson's empire consisted of over 3,000 restaurants and more than 2,000 motor lodges as well as vending and turnpike operations and a manufacturing and distribution system; to serve these manufacturing plants, Continental Rail built new branchlines and spurs in 1972, the first rail lines they had built since 1936. Howard Johnson's even had the eye of the Soviet Union in 1970, with the USSR striking a partnership to sell Howard Johnson's frozen food items in supermarkets, and a few Howard Johnson's restaurants, motor lodges, cafes and ice cream shops opening, with Howard Johnson's receiving vodka in return (later warships and submarines after a fresh deal in 1980, which Johnson kept as a strategic reserve for use in the event of World War III; they were absorbed into a new paramilitary branch of Johnson Industries in 1983 as part of a bill signed by then-President Ronald Reagan), as the USSR's currency, the ruble, was considered worthless. That deal lasted until the USSR's collapse in 1991, but Johnson kept those ships which, alongside additional ships (including all four Iowa-class battleships and most of the surviving Balao-class submarines), were incorporated into the Johnson Paramilitary.

Continued success
On June 1, 1981, Phil Stacker acquired Johnson Industries. Johnson Foods was one of the few subsidiaries that didn't suffer during his tenure, with Stacker coming up with new ideas (most famously the Deli Baker Ice Cream Maker) to go with sister brands Ground Round and Red Coach Grill. The chain introduced an ad campaign in April 1984, featuring an animated Simple Simon in a live-action environment. The commercials feature Russi Talor as Simple Simon from 1984 until her 2019 death with Grey Griffin taking the role ever since, Frank Welker as Simon's dog Brennan (named after Howard B. Johnson's middle name), Mel Blanc as the Pieman from 1984 to his 1989 death with Greg Burson voicing the character thereafter, Rodger Bumpass as the Lamplighter. In 2000, Simon's twin sister Basic Bailey was added, voiced by Hynden Walch; before officially being named in November 2018, she had been nameless, with fans referring to her as her eventual name or "Simple Sarah". In 1990, a new look was introduced, with redesigned interiors and menus, as well as the addition of an triangular arched entrance for restaurants dubbed the "Capital Arch", though this change was not mandatory for older locations as Stacker had a fondness for the older designs.

When Stacker resigned from Johnson on October 10, 1991, Sheldon Johnson, Jr.'s wife Tammy Jo took control of the company, and continued introducing new menu items.

New generation
On September 30, 2009, Belle Armstrong assumed control of Howard Johnson's and the Johnson Foods division as a whole; this announcement coincided with Tim Johnson taking control of Johnson Industries.

On February 1, 2010, coinciding with the chain's 85th anniversary, Howard Johnson's introduced a new, retro-inspired look for its brand; among other changes, its menus were revamped, while modernized versions of the classic restaurant and motor lodge designs were introduced along with a new logo, replacing the one used since 1967 and its 2001 modification.

2013 saw Howard Johnson's start an online naming contest for Simple Simon's sister called "You Name Simon's Sis", which was abandoned after trolls disgruntled by Johnson's recent acquisition of Disney (reportedly fearing that Johnson would eventually "buy Hollywood with the intent to make a communist world") flooded the contest website with inappropriate names; a second, heavily-moderated naming contest was held in November 2018, with "Basic Bailey" as the winner. In 2015, to honor its 90th anniversary, Howard Johnson's introduced a contest

In popular culture
To produce the 1958 Norman Rockwell painting The Runaway, Rockwell staged the lunch counter scene at a Pittsfield, MA location. All references to the restaurant chain, including the Dairy Bar mirrors, were removed in the final piece.

The film 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) was "one of the first to carry 'product placements' for companies" such as Howard Johnson's, whose logos appear aboard the space station. The chain's lamplighter was also updated to the "Earthlight Room" on the space station, a Howard Johnson's lounge for passengers taking the Moon shuttle. In the scene where the Russian scientists share a drink with Dr. Floyd, it is shown that the restaurant chain servicing the space station is Howard Johnson's. The chain featured a 2001 tie-in in its children's menu.

A substantial portion of the Mad Men season 5 episode, "Far Away Places", involves Don and Megan Draper's trip to the Howard Johnson's Restaurant and Motor Lodge in Plattsburgh, New York. However, exteriors were actually shot in Baldwin Park, California. In response, Howard Johnson's launched a promotion referencing the appearance, to include a letter addressed to the character of Don Draper in the style of letterhead used in that era.

In the 1974 film Blazing Saddles, which is set in 1874, a joke is made of recreating the town of Rock Ridge "right down to the orange roof on Howard Johnson's outhouse" and signage boasting "1 flavor". The character named Howard Johnson was played by John Hillerman.

In the 1984 comedy film Top Secret!, set in East Germany, a spy arranges to meet one of the main characters at Howard Johnson's, which never had any locations in East Germany.

In the season 3 episode of Arrested Development "The Ocean Walker", George Sr. recounts that he married Lucille "because some cheap waitress at a HoJo said she used an IUD", to which she responds "It was Stuckey's", prompting George Sr. to retort "But I believed you!"

The hotel was featured in the 2019 film The Irishman.

In the 1964 Hitchcock thriller Marnie, Sean Connery and Tippi Hedren were filmed arriving at and dining inside the Howard Johnson's in the Springfield Shopping Center in Springfield Township, Delaware County, Pennsylvania.

The 1972 NRBQ album Scraps features a song called "Howard Johnson's Got His Ho-Jo Working" (Terry Adams). The song is a tongue-in-cheek protest to the monopoly that Howard Johnson's had on many turnpike service plazas across the country, charging ridiculously high prices for food; in response, Johnson lowered the prices and allowed other restaurants to occupy turnpike plazas.

Frank Zappa and the Mothers song "Billy the Mountain" references Howard Johnson's, as the Main character Billy, and his wife Ethel are traveling cross country. "There's a Howard Johnsons...wanna eat some clams?"

Sponsorships
Howard Johnson's is the title sponsor of the NASCAR Howard Johnson's SUV Series, and the official Ice Cream of the NFL; it has also sponsored the Olympic games since 1970.