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Posted on Wed, Jul. 13, 2005



R E L A T E D C O N T E N T


Howard Johnson — yes, there was a Howard Johnson — is credited with starting the first franchise. He’d be sad to see how HoJo’s has fallen.

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Out There | HoJo's story ending on an overcooked note
By Jeff Weinstein
Inquirer Columnist

Nostalgia, it happens, is a sentiment we can access without any firsthand experience of what we are nostalgic for. Why, just recently I've asked dozens of friends and colleagues how they feel about the reportedly inevitable shuttering of the nation's last half-dozen Howard Johnson's restaurants.
"Oh, those clams!" one of my intimates swooned.
"And which HoJo was your favorite?"
"Now that you mention it, I can't recall actually eating in one... "
The anomalous urban Howard Johnson's on New York's Great White Way (at Broadway and 46th Street), serving up fried oysters and ice cream sundaes to timid tourists and tired theater critics for half a century, is hanging by a toenail. And when I phoned the seasonal one in Asbury Park, N.J., asking if it were open, the answer was, "Yeah, why do you want to know?"
Still, for those whose nostalgia stretches back only as far as golden arches, an abbreviated history of the orange roof is in order. In 1925, a vehicle of the entrepreneurial urge named Howard Dearing Johnson opened a drugstore soda-fountain in Wollaston, Mass. Apparently fascinated with the taste and cash appeal of ice cream cones, he worked on creating the best possible chocolate, vanilla and strawberry by doubling butterfat and avoiding artificial anything.
Churnings led to earnings, and his frozen obsession - based, significantly, on the conjoined twins of quality and flavor - grew to 28 varieties, an enticement ultimately more famous than the ice cream itself.
And then, with a groundbreaking 20th-century idea, Johnson planted the seed for both his phenomenal success and ultimate demise: In 1935, he let someone open, for a fee, a Howard Johnson's in nearby Cape Cod. Starry-eyed professors in the hospitality industry refer to this as the world's first franchise.
The restaurants, which were "branded" with a fakey colonial theme and a stop-here orange-and-turquoise color scheme, multiplied like rabbits - the McDonald's of their time. They proved especially magnetic on the road: The Howard Johnson's that opened in 1940 at South Midway on the brand-new Pennsylvania Turnpike was a pioneer. My partner bloodied his teen hands scraping supercold ice cream (makes airier, more profitable cones) as the takeout soda jerk at a HoJo's on the Garden State Parkway in the '50s. Busloads of travelers, he tells me, devoured everything in sight.
The menu offered standards such as grilled "Frankforts" on toasted buttered rolls served in little paper troughs, baked beans, mac and cheese, open-face turkey sandwiches with canned gravy, and fried clam strips, all quick, comforting, pre-pyramid American food. As the chain expanded, food production was centralized; cost-accounting turned the turkey into turkey roll and honest peeled spuds to instant white.
The orange roof was a treat for the young me, but a rare one, because my Brooklynite father thought that Howard Johnson's weren't "real." He couldn't, he said, kibitz the counterman, and any hot dog that called itself a Frankfort, was slathered with relish, and didn't smack of garlic was not for the Weinsteins.
How could genuine hospitality be found in places that were identical?
So, with wincing partner in tow, I made a valedictory visit to the theater-district HoJo. No orange and lime here; it's all done in That '70s Show browns and tans. Because this particular decadent branch was known for having a full bar from which you could order a "decanter of Martini, Manhattan or Daiquiri," I thought I would toast farewell with cocktails and clams.
Moribund restaurants throw off an unmistakable air of shoulders shrugged, of Sisyphean defeat. No more pitchers of drinks here, just a thimble-size glass that could barely contain the - tasty - Manhattan cherry.
A shell-shocked waiter delivered our food. The fried clams came from Howard Johnson's in Pompeii. The ice cream wasn't even their own brand. On the way out, I shed half a tear.
One of the sadnesses of growing older is that we may never be certain that something we loved as a child would give us commensurate pleasure now. The frozen Howard Johnson's macaroni and cheese you can still buy in a supermarket, ostensibly made from the same restaurant recipe, goes down like pap compared with other brands. What did those savory battered clam strips and dripping cones really taste like so many years ago? Did their remembered sweet freshness tap the optimism of a burgeoning nation - or could it be we just didn't know any better?
If you're like me, you'll imagine yourself in that early Massachusetts fountain, sitting on a stool and waiting as the young man in a white cap behind the marble counter brings us - what? Clams caught daily in nearby Ipswich, popping with sea water and hot fat? And then the nation's creamiest ice cream, its farm grassiness shot through with the acid sugar of ripe New England fruit?
Goodbye Howard Johnson's and all your flavors. It was a very American try.

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Contact staff writer Jeff Weinstein at 215-854-5152 or jweinstein@phillynews.com. Read his recent work at http://go.philly.com/jeffweinstein.
For more on Howard Johnson's history, visit http://www.roadsidefans.com/hojo.html.

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I loved Howard Johnson's. They had the best cheeseburgers and coke floats!!! My friends and I used to ditch class and sometimes spend the afternoon at the HoJo's, up the hill from my high school. The waitresses never gave us any problems there, not at all like the Tastee Freeze! The Tastee Freeze lady told us to go back to class, and threatened to call our school if we didn't. So mean.

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Freixenet, Moët. Doesn’t really matter, as long as it’s not Great Western. -- Henri David

HoJo's was indeed a franchised delight, but could not compare to the Wonderfulness that was the Hot Shoppe in Jenkintown. Particularly after going to the movies at the Hiway.

Joelly, dude, pretty please edit the tags out of your post so it's readable.

And I suspect that your bandwidth theft is a no-no.

I caught the tail-end of the life of a HoJo's in downtown Peoria.

They should study HoJo in business schools, as an example of a company that squandered the goodwill of its customers and its own reputation for quality.

Is that an oxymoron?

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The Phils are champs, go phuck yourself!

Not at all. You should make it a stop on your visit to Illinois to see the new Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Springfield. You'll see a city that suffered hard in the 80s when Caterpillar hit some rough times but now is taking advantage of its downtown riverfront very nicely. I usually end up eating at the Rythm Kitchen Cafe.

HoJo's, alas, is no more.

Okay....I never knew Ho Jo's served food. I thought it was only a motel chain. You learn something every day.

anyone know if that hojo motel in gettysburg is still there?

when a franchise's last bastion is the turnpike, you know they're on the way out (hojo, roy rogers, hardees, sbarro's).

I don't know about Roy Rogers (I'm a midwesterner), but I wasn't aware Hardee's-Carl's Jr. or Sbarro's was having any trouble.

Add Bob's Big Boy to that list - for a while there were still a few holdouts on the Jersey Turnpike, but I haven't seen any in a while.

There used to be a Hojo's in Wilmington, DE off of Concord Pike (near where I grew up), but it changed owners about 2 years ago. Several years ago the News Journal did an article on it - apparently this was the most profitable location in the nation. There were regulars who ate there every day for the past umpteen years.