Roy Rogers Restaurants back in the day

In the mid-1970's my family and I used to go every Sunday to Roy Rogers Restaurant. It was one of the  bonding activities, that my father chose to do to  keep us together after my mother died.   We usually went to a midday Sunday  mass, and then  we would drive to the Congressional Plaza in Rockville, MD to the Roy Rogers there. I would always  have a Coke, Fries and a burger. My brother would always get the Roast Beef Sandwich. I don't remember what my sister would get. Originally, the chain had girls in fancy cowgirl  miniskirts out on the floor, cleaning the tables, that was kind of cool.

Vintage  Roy Roger Commercial from Youtube

Roy Rogers Congressional Plaza -1960's

The 1970's and 1980's  were the golden age of Roy Rogers Restaurants. The chain was  assembled by the Marriott Corporation  in  1968, it  used  the name of Roy Rogers,   moderately well known   star of movie Westerns  to sell fast food . Many of the original  locations were rebrandings of RoBee's House of Beef, and  some   Junior  Hot Shoppes locations.  

Roy's food was a cut above other fast food chains, and I think that  was true of most of the food I ate there, though the chicken was not as good as Kentucky Fried Chicken. They were most known for their incredible Roast Beef Sandwiches  which the staff cut by hand, and could be added to at a fixing bar with whatever condiment you wished. The very salty french fries were also of high quality, and were apparently cooked in vat of beef tallow and vegetable oil, a mixture which was later changed.

 Roy Rogers  were owned by the Marriott Corporation, which started as the owner of Hot Shoppes  restaurants in the Washington area  but over time expanded into food service, hotels and bad airline food.     Marriott  managed to bring Roy Rogers to 600 locations until in 1990, Marriott sold Roy's to Hardee's, a lower quality fast food restaurant, that excelled at breakfast and little else.   Not a good idea.

Hardee's  quickly switched most of the Roy Rogers Restaurants to  the Hardee's brand name, which was greeted with wide disdain, to the point where many of the switched Hardee's had to be switched back to the Roy Rogers nameplate.  But the damage was done, and eventually most  of the Roy  Rogers leases and franchises   were sold off to other restaurant chains, notably McDonalds's.   Fortunately, the tattered remnants  of chain survived. at first with just  13 stand alone  restaurant franchises   and  some over-priced highway rest stop locations, run by HMS travel hotel. Roy Rogers  Restaurants is now run by son  of one of  men who created the chain, and they have slowly brought back  to almost 50 locations.


Roy Rogers Restaurants -official site

Also from Felpin's Pond_
How Rockville, Maryland changed over time

An article about Hot Shoppes...

The Hot Shoppes

Posted originally April 2012 by J.C. Bernhardt