Roy Rogers Family Restaurants
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Roy Rogers Family Restaurants is a chain of U.S. fast-food family restaurants, numbering over 800 at its peak, named for cowboy actor Roy Rogers. Marriott International, Inc., founded the chain, licensed the name from Roy Rogers, and operated the restaurants from 1968 through 1990. The first location opened in 1968 in Falls Church, Virginia.
In 1990, Marriott sold the chain for $365 million to Hardee's, a Southern chain seeking to expand into the Mid-Atlantic market. Hardee's sold about 200 Roy Rogers locations to Wendy's and Boston Market, and converted the remaining non-franchised locations into Hardee's restaurants; many of the new Hardee's continued to feature Roy Rogers' popular fried chicken. The Mid-Atlantic Hardee's were generally unsuccessful, and a few years later, Hardee's tried to convert some locations back to Roy Rogers, but the products were not the same as those of the original Roy Rogers locations, and they, too, failed. Hardee's finally sold the remaining Roy Rogers locations to McDonald's, leaving just 13 Roy Rogers franchisees in existence, with approximately two dozen free-standing locations, in addition to locations owned by HMSHost that were located inside travel plazas along highways in the Northeast.
The fare featured roast beef sandwiches and fried chicken as specialties, plus typical fast food items like hamburgers and french fries. Though standard Roy Rogers locations served food in a typical fast-food fashion, the franchises located throughout mid-atlantic highway rest-stops would serve the food in a cafeteria style. Patrons would push their trays on rails past stations stocked with prewrapped packages of hamburgers, cheeseburgers, and roast-beef sandwiches. A popular feature of this chain in any of the locations was the so-called "fixins bar" (sometimes spelled with an apostrophe as "fixin's bar"). Sandwich items were delivered without any of the customary garnishes. After selecting and paying for these items, patrons could garnish them to their own taste at the "fixins bar" with such items as ketchup, BBQ sauce, mayonnaise, horseradish sauce, lettuce, tomatoes, pickles, and onions.
Some of the restaurants were independently owned and still survive, particularly in western Maryland and Northern Virginia, as well as some highway service plazas in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, Delaware, and other locations along the East Coast of the United States. A Roy Rogers in eastern Cincinnati is believed to be the only open location west of the Appalachian Mountains. A lone Roy Rogers sits across the street from the main entrance to Penn Station on 7th Avenue in New York City. In recent years, the Roy Rogers restaurant chain has been revived, and an initiative is underway to bring more locations back. As of 2005, 55 restaurants are operating under the Roy Rogers Family Restaurants name.
