Kenny Rogers Roasters

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Kenny Rogers Roasters is an oven-cooked chicken restaurant started in 1991 in the United States by country music musician Kenny Rogers and former Kentucky Fried Chicken owner and original developer John Y. Brown, Jr. The menu was originally centered on wood-fired rotisserie chicken.

By 1995, the menu had expanded to include turkey, ribs, and various side dishes, and the chain had expanded to over 350 restaurants, including locations in Canada, the Middle East, and Asia.

In 1998, the company went through a restructuring, which resulted in its acquisition by Nathan's Famous, Inc., completed on April 1, 1999; as a result of restructuring, many locations closed. Today, according to Nathan's Famous corporate web site, there is only one U.S. Kenny Rogers Roasters operating at the Ontario Mills mall in Ontario, California. Some of the company's Miami Subs Grill locations feature Kenny Rogers Roasters menu items, along with Nathan's Famous hot dogs and Arthur Treacher's fish items.

The Kenny Rogers Roasters brand is also used in ten other countries.

[edit] Television

The restaurant was featured in a 1996 episode of Seinfeld entitled "The Chicken Roaster." The episode, which became a glowing endorsement of the chain, features Kramer, who initially leads a boycott of the restaurant due to the neon sign affecting his sleep patterns but who becomes addicted to its product once he tastes it. The location closed at the end of the episode. Newman uses the line "it's the wood that makes it good" to describe the chicken.

On the November 27, 1997, episode of Late Night with Conan O'Brien, Rogers failed a blind taste test to correctly identify his brand of chicken, choosing NBC Commissary chicken over Kenny Rogers Roasters.