Lum's or LUMS was a family restaurant chain in the United States.
LUMS was founded in 1956 by Stuart and Clifford S. Perlman[1] when they purchased Lum's hot dog stand in Miami Beach for $10,000. Over the next few years, the Perlman brothers opened three additional Lum's restaurants, for a total of four by 1961.[2]
Clifford Perlman, who in addition to owning Lum's, had been serving as the president of Southern Wood Industries, Inc., resigned that position to work full time for Lum's. Under the brothers, Lum's began aggressively expanding and franchising. In 1969, Lum's, Inc. was admitted to the New York Stock Exchange.
In 1969, Lum's, Inc. purchased Caesars Palace, then a 500 room hotel casino on the famous Las Vegas Strip, for $60 million. The food operations of Lum's, Inc. were sold in 1971 to John Y. Brown, then Chairman of Kentucky Fried Chicken and a group of investors.[3] At the time of sale, the company owned and franchised 400 stores in the continental U.S., Hawaii, Puerto Rico, and Europe.
In 1978, Wienerwald Holdings A.G., a Swiss holding company and parent of the Wienerwald restaurant chain, under the direction of Friedrich Jahn, purchased the 273 restaurant chain from Brown.[4] However, Wienerwald had overextended itself and was forced to file for bankruptcy in 1982.
The original Lum's location closed in 1983.[5] An incorrect July 2009 newspaper article said the last remaining LUMS location, in Davie, Florida, closed on June 28, 2009, but there is one remaining LUMS in the Bellevue, Neb., suburb of Omaha.[6][7] For a time, the company's commercial spokesman was Milton Berle.
In 2010 a LUMS opened in Seekonk, Massachusetts.