A Fort Wayne chain, a trademark dispute and a cowboy’s name.

Roy Rogers Restaurants grew out of a roast-beef chain with a different name. English Wikipedia, drawing on newspaper reports from January and February 1968, says RoBee’s House of Beef was started in 1967 in Fort Wayne, Indiana, by the operators of the Azar’s Big Boy franchise, and that the Marriott Corporation — which had acquired Bob’s Big Boy and the Big Boy trademark in 1967 — bought RoBee’s in February 1968 with plans to take it across the country. The Washington Post, in an April 2016 profile of the chain’s current owners, gives the same outline: Marriott bought RoBee’s in Fort Wayne but could not secure national rights to the RoBee’s name.

The name problem had a legal edge. Wikipedia says the roast-beef chain Arby’s sued RoBee’s for trademark infringement and unfair competition in January 1968, citing The Indianapolis Star, because “RoBee’s” sounded too close to “Arby’s”, and that the settlement required a new brand name. Marriott wanted a name customers would already recognise. According to Wikipedia, citing a 1982 report in the Asbury Park Press, Big Boy founder Bob Wian, then on Marriott’s board, knew the agent of the singing cowboy Roy Rogers and suggested approaching him; the Post account likewise credits a Marriott board member who was a friend of the agent. Rogers, the film and television star, agreed to a licensing arrangement for his name, and Wikipedia adds, citing the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette in 1969, that he was also paid for personal appearances at the restaurants.

The new restaurants opened as “Roy Rogers Roast Beef Sandwich” restaurants. Wikipedia, citing newspaper advertisements from 1967 and 1968, says the chain kept RoBee’s building design and its covered-wagon logo, so the look of the earlier chain carried over under the cowboy’s name. The opening month varies by source: The Washington Post (2016) and Wikipedia place the earliest Roy Rogers restaurant in Falls Church, Virginia, in April 1968, while the Washington Business Journal in November 2003 dated the Falls Church opening to January 1968. The company’s own timeline lists 1968 and Falls Church. Wikipedia says the earliest units, in Falls Church and in Bethesda, Maryland, were conversions of Jr. Hot Shoppes, Marriott’s existing fast-food restaurants, chosen because Marriott was based in the Washington area, and that RoBee’s units began reopening as Roy Rogers in May 1968.

Rogers himself was part of the launch. Wikipedia, citing The Jackson Sun of 12 May 1968, says he toured namesake restaurants in four Southern states, appearing at each for an hour, shaking hands and handing out signed photographs, and that the chain’s early television commercials were filmed around Apple Valley, California, where he lived with his family. Marriott offered regional franchises to its Big Boy operators; Wikipedia names Frisch’s, Elias Brothers, Abdow’s, Marc’s and Shoney’s among those that took them, and says the chain also reached Canada through that country’s Big Boy franchisee.

Marriott, Hardee’s and a family that never left.

Growth under Marriott was uneven. Wikipedia, citing The Baltimore Sun of August 1971, says Marriott suspended Roy Rogers franchising in 1970 after closing restaurants that were losing money, before franchising later resumed. A larger expansion came through an acquisition: The New York Times and The Washington Post reported on 5 January 1982 that Marriott had offered to buy the Gino’s hamburger chain, and Wikipedia says many Gino’s restaurants were then converted to Roy Rogers in the Baltimore and Washington area. The company’s own timeline lists the Gino’s conversions under the 1980s.

The family that owns the brand today entered the story through Marriott. The Washington Post (2016) and the Washington Business Journal (2003) both say Peter Plamondon Sr. headed Marriott’s restaurant division when the Roy Rogers chain was created. According to the Post, he left Marriott in 1979 and became a Roy Rogers franchisee, opening his own restaurant in Frederick, Maryland, in August 1980; the company’s timeline also dates his Frederick franchise to 1980.

In 1990 Marriott sold the chain. Wikipedia names the buyer as Imasco, the parent company of Hardee’s, which was looking to grow in the Mid-Atlantic; the Post and the company’s timeline describe it as a sale to Hardee’s. Wikipedia says company-run Roy Rogers restaurants were converted to Hardee’s, and, citing Nation’s Restaurant News and The New York Times, that Hardee’s sold remaining Roy Rogers sites to McDonald’s, Wendy’s and Boston Market between 1994 and 1996. What remained was a franchise system of independent operators, including highway travel-plaza restaurants run by HMSHost, which the Washington Business Journal described in 2003 as the former Host Marriott Services. Wikipedia says CKE Restaurants bought Hardee’s from Imasco in 1997 while Imasco kept the Roy Rogers trademark and franchise system.

The Plamondon family kept its franchises through those changes. The Post says brothers Jim and Pete Plamondon Jr. bought out their father in 1998, and the company says Peter Sr. sold the franchise business to his sons that year. On 22 December 2000, the Post reported, the brothers opened a Roy Rogers in a former Burger King in a Montgomery County, Maryland, strip centre, in an area that had been without the brand for years, and the queues persuaded them to pursue the brand itself. In 2002 they bought it. The Post describes the seller as Hardee’s holding company; Wikipedia, citing the Washington Business Journal, names Imasco; and the company’s own history names CKE Restaurants, Hardee’s parent.

The Business Journal reported in November 2003 that the family’s Plamondon Enterprises had bought the trademark and franchise system and formed Roy Rogers Franchise Co., based in Frederick, to relaunch the brand, and that HMSHost had signed a new long-term franchise agreement for its travel-plaza units. Roy Rogers Franchise Company LLC is still the name on the chain’s website, which gives a Frederick, Maryland headquarters. The company’s timeline describes a reboot of the concept from 2003, prototype remodels and technology upgrades between 2019 and 2022, a revived franchise effort in 2023, the brand’s 55th year, and an expansion into Cherry Hill, New Jersey, in 2024–2025.

Design and documentation.

The restaurant names in this group grew up along American highways and suburban roads, where a chain had to be recognised from a moving car long before anyone read a menu. In that setting a brand’s identity is carried as much by buildings as by printed matter: a tall pole sign that can be seen from the road, a roof shape repeated from one site to the next, a colour that marks the building at a distance, and a name lettered large enough to read at speed.

Inside, the same identity continues in smaller pieces — the menu board and printed menu, placemats, cups and wrappers, staff uniforms and, for many chains, a character or mascot meant to make the name friendly and easy to remember. Because restaurant chains are often sold, merged, franchised or licensed, those pieces can outlast the company that first commissioned them, and a sign or roof can stay in place long after ownership has changed.

Each guide separates what independent sources record from what the company says about itself — who started the chain, who has owned and franchised it since, and how its name, signs and buildings have changed — and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word.

A licensed name, a wagon and a bar of fixings.

The Roy Rogers identity rests on a borrowed name. The brand is named for the cowboy star, but by Wikipedia’s account the chain began as RoBee’s, and the new name replaced one that a competitor had challenged. That makes the name a licence rather than a founder’s signature: according to Wikipedia’s 1969 source, Rogers was paid for its use and for appearances, while Marriott owned and ran the business.

The western theme ran through the early material. Wikipedia’s account that the chain kept RoBee’s covered-wagon logo rests on advertisements from 1967 and 1968, and a ranch vocabulary carried into the menu. The fried chicken drew on Marriott’s own past: Wikipedia says the Pappy Parker name came from the Hot Shoppes chain and was advertised from the 1970s with a cartoon prospector, citing newspaper advertisements from 1976 and 1977, and the company’s timeline says Pappy Parker’s fried chicken and quarter-pound burgers joined roast beef on the menu in the early 1970s to form what it calls the “Big Three”. The company’s website lists the Double R Bar Burger and the Gold Rush Chicken Sandwich.

The Fixin’s Bar, a self-serve station of condiments and toppings, is another fixture. The company’s timeline places it in the mid-1970s, Wikipedia says sandwiches are served plain so customers can dress them there, and The Washington Post in 2016 described it as a trademark of the restaurants, kept stocked by a roving hostess. When the Plamondons relaunched the chain, the Post reported, they called the remodelling and reinvention programme “Project Trigger”, after the name of Rogers’s horse, and the Washington Business Journal reported in 2003 that they had shot new food photography for the stores.

For a design guide, Roy Rogers shows how a licensed personal name, a frontier vocabulary and a few recurring fixtures can carry a restaurant chain through a hotel company, a fast-food group and the family of a former Marriott executive. Compare it with Big Boy, whose trademark Marriott acquired in 1967 and whose franchisees became Roy Rogers’ regional operators, and Shoney’s, one of those franchisees. For this guide we use saddle red, wagon tan and denim blue with a western serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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