Quincy Youth Corps 2024 Series: The Glorious Days of Howard Johnson’s

Editor’s Note: Today we are pleased to share an essay written for the 2024 Summer Youth Corps internship program. This City-run program partners cultural institutions around Quincy with historically curious students from the public high schools for six weeks over the summer. At Quincy Historical Society our student interns are tasked with selecting a topic from Quincy history to research and present in a short essay. This essay was written by Helen Cao, a student from North Quincy High School. We hope you enjoy it!

The Glorious Days of Howard Johnson’s

Prior to the existence of our beloved 21st-century hotspots for fast food and restaurants affiliated with delivery service apps such as McDonalds, Chipotle, Starbucks, America’s largest restaurant chain and a fabled road-trip pit stop–for families and all demographics alike was Howard Johnson’s. HoJos (abbreviated for Howard Johnson’s) started as an ice cream counter at a drugstore in Wollaston, and expanded into a nationwide success and fixture in the hospitality and food industry. Howard Deering Johnson was an aspiring middle-class individual who relentlessly chased what he wanted and pursued a career that he might’ve not been able to today as a high school dropout. The distinctive features and attributes that differentiated the restaurant chain from everything at the time are a reflection of Howard Johnson’s opportunistic mindset and steadfast perseverance against all odds.

Howard D. Johnson was born on February 2, 1897, to John Hayes Johnson and Olive Belle Wright Johnson.  In his early years Howard Jr. attended Wollaston Grammar School and the Wollaston Unitarian Church. He also worked in his father’s cigar business– the United Retailers Company, allowing him to refine his aptitude and entrepreneurial discipline at a young age. However, at the age of 16, after a devastating financial loss in his father’s business dealings, he persuaded his father to allow him to drop out of school and become a full-time employee. His determination and grit enabled the business to bounce back on its feet in a brief bout of normalcy before it was uprooted permanently. 

However, this all took a downward turn when his father passed away in 1921, leaving Howard a heavy debt of $30,000 as the cigar business failed. Realizing that he was now to be the sole financial breadwinner to his mother and sisters, he flung himself into working again. Eventually, Howard ended up acquiring the failing Walker-Barlow drugstore in 1925. He dramatically transformed the landscape of the business that was already outfitted with a soda fountain and three ice cream flavors. Howard engineered his famous ice cream recipe that summer that was formulated with twenty-two percent butterfat, twice the amount of commercial ice creams. It proved to be a booming turning point that amassed customers daily. Soon after, he decided the only way to perpetuate his success was to expand his menu items and to a beachfront location as in the summer of 1927.

In 1929, Howard opened his first-ever sit down restaurant notably featuring frankforts (hotdogs), clam strips, baked beans, roast turkey, his unmistakable 28 flavors of ice cream that came with a complimentary emblem shaped cookie with the logo design when ordered on as a platter dish, and appealing options in the children’s menu, etc. But all of it boiled down to predictability and soundness in the uniform quality and taste. Howard had people swarming even in the early hours into his space in the newly constructed Granite Trust Bank Building in Quincy Square. This would prove to be one of the most auspicious decisions he ever made as it was placed in a bustling intersection. 

Fighting tooth and nail to keep his business afloat between the years of 1930-1933 as the economy was grappling with the Great Depression, Howard faced one of the roughest financial hurdles of his business lifetime. Howard oscillated between cutting monetary expenses, eliminating inefficiencies, and rolling out new recipes. Remarkably, one day in those turbulent years, the company managed to churn out one of their most beloved products as a result of an employee’s defiant determination to create her own bread loaves for the company instead of their usual store sourced ones. Miraculously, that appealed to their audience of customers more than anticipated, and inspired Howard to expand his line of take-out products to include baked beans, brown bread, and pastries. 

Emboldened by surviving the financial difficulties of the early 1930s, Howard decided to embark on a mission to land his first stronghold in the roadside diner industry.  Howard assigned the first ever franchised branch of his business to Reginald Sprague, who manned the location in Orleans, Cape Cod. It opened in May 1935, defined by its signature orange roofed tiles and turquoise shutters. By the fall of 1940, Howard had established an estimate of 130 franchised eateries nationwide, ensuring uniformity in decorum and provisions. He crafted what was known as the “Howard Johnson Bible”. This was a rulebook that directed specifications on the inner workings of the restaurants, ranging from menus, recipes, to service standards, dress codes, etc. A year later, Howard obtained exclusive ownership of The Red Coach Inn in Wayland, Massachusetts, and constructed an affiliate business chain called the Red Coach Grill that served cocktails, steak, lobster, and specialty entrees.

In World War II, by 1944, Howard Johnson’s restaurants barely survived as only a few as a dozen of them were still lucrative enough to maintain their stream of customers. Due to the shift in minimizing recreational road expeditions and to fuel rationing, Howard turned towards providing catering services for war workers and military recruits. As the quantity of his restaurants began to dissolve from as many as two hundred to fewer than seventy, Howard had, as a stopgap, converted some of them into jam factories that fulfilled food contracts for defense plants, shipyards, military posts, and colleges. 

 In 1955, Howard expanded his scope of roadside accommodation into motor lodges, with the first being in Savannah, Georgia. Howard took advantage of the redevelopment of the new interstate highway system’s layout of exits, so that his restaurants would be a center of attraction for people coming in and out of city centers and traveling between. Upon taking stock of the new competitors in the fast food landscape, such as McDonald’s, Howard Johnson’s diversified its ventures once more with The Ground Round in 1969, a casual restaurant that’s widely remembered for its endearing tradition of throwing peanut shells on the floor.

The company underwent a change in leadership in 1959 as Howard D. Johnson resigned from his executive position and conferred the authority onto his son, Howard Brennan Johnson. But it was difficult to navigate the company through the economic challenges and changing tastes of Americans in the 1970s. Howard B. cut costs wherever he could. These maneuvers drained the quality of hospitality that Howard Johnson’s was renowned for. Ultimately, though, Howard B. Johnson decided to sell to a conglomerate company in 1979 when approached with the opportunity. This trade-off and rotation in ownership would be repeated through at least 4 other companies. Today, Howard Johnson’s restaurants have become a thing of the past, only the hotel/motel brand remains.  The last remaining Howard Johnson’s eatery to survive was a franchised restaurant in Lake George, New York. It ceased its operations just a few years ago, wiping away any remnants of what once was a widely esteemed concession.

Helen Cao
North Quincy High School

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WORKS CITED

Freedman, Paul. Ten Restaurants That Changed America. Liveright: New York. 2018.

Langdon, Philip. Orange Roofs, Golden Arches: The Architecture of American Chain Restaurants. Knopf : New York. 1986. 

Sammarco, Anthony M. A History of Howard Johnson’s: How a Massachusetts Soda Fountain Became an American Icon. American Palate: Charleston. 2013.

Cahill, Timothy Patrick. Profiles in the American Dream: The Real-Life Stories of the Struggles of American Entrepreneurs. The Christopher Publishing House: Hanover. 1994. 

Hoover, Gary. “The First Giant Restaurant Chain: Howard Johnson’s: Rise and Fall.” Business History – The American Business History Center, 26 Aug. 2021. https://americanbusinesshistory.org/the-first-giant-restaurant-chain-howard-johnson-rise-and-fall/ accessed September 4, 2024.

Morrell, Alan. “Whatever Happened to … Howard Johnson’s?” Democrat and Chronicle, Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, 21 Aug. 2018. https://www.democratandchronicle.com/story/news/local/rocroots/2014/06/27/whatever-happened-howard-johnsons/11573795/ Accessed September 4, 2024.