Two founders, a Charlotte restaurant and a long name.

Bojangles began in Charlotte, North Carolina. English Wikipedia says the chain was founded on 6 July 1977 by Jack Fulk and Richard Thomas, and Nation’s Restaurant News, reporting on the brand’s 2020 relaunch, also gives 1977 as its founding year. Wikipedia says franchising began the following year. From 1977 until 2020 the full trading name was Bojangles’ Famous Chicken ’n Biscuits, a name that spelled out the two things on which the menu was built: Cajun-seasoned fried chicken and buttermilk biscuits.

The concept soon passed out of its founders’ hands. Wikipedia says Fulk sold it in 1981 to the Horn & Hardart Company of New York, and that under that ownership the chain grew quickly, helped by acquisitions such as Judy Judy Judy’s in 1982 and the Florida-based Biskits chain in 1984. In 1990 Horn & Hardart sold the bulk of its interest to Sienna Partners and Interwest Partners, and the company was then led by Dick Campbell, a former KFC executive.

Ownership kept changing through the next two decades. Wikipedia says the company was sold in 1998 to a group of investors headed by Joe Drury, a former Wendy’s executive; bought again in 2007 by the Charlotte private-equity firm Falfurrias Capital Partners; and sold in August 2011 to Advent International of Boston after competitive bidding. The company filed to list its shares on the stock market in 2015.

The name also spread beyond the restaurants. Wikipedia says the company bought naming rights to the original Charlotte Coliseum on Independence Boulevard, now Bojangles Coliseum, and in 2012 began sponsoring the NASCAR race known as the Bojangles’ Southern 500.

Private again in 2019, and headquartered in Charlotte.

The current ownership dates from a deal announced in 2018. WBTV, in a report by Jennifer Miller published by WECT on 6 November 2018, said Bojangles’ would be acquired by two New York firms, Durational Capital Management LP and The Jordan Company, L.P., in an all-cash transaction expected to close in early 2019, and that the company would remain based in Charlotte. Verdict Food Service reported on 14 January 2019 that stockholders had approved the acquisition at a special meeting at the company’s offices.

Wikipedia dates the completion of the deal to 28 January 2019, when Bojangles became a privately held company owned by The Jordan Company and Durational Capital Management. The same month, Wikipedia says, Jose Armario replaced Randy Kibler as chief executive and brought in Brian Unger as chief operating officer, both of them former McDonald’s employees. Nation’s Restaurant News identifies Jackie Woodward as the chief marketing officer who led the 2020 relaunch. The company remains headquartered in Charlotte.

Since 2019 the chain has moved beyond the Southeastern states it primarily serves. Wikipedia records a December 2019 agreement with Love’s Travel Stops & Country Stores to add Bojangles restaurants at travel stops in several states, an announced move into Columbus, Ohio, in 2021, and later announcements of restaurants in New Jersey, Las Vegas, Phoenix and Southern California, followed by openings in Pueblo, Colorado, in 2025 and in Wyoming, Michigan, in 2026. It also says the chain has a restaurant in Honduras and has previously had franchised restaurants in Grand Cayman, Jamaica, Mexico and China.

The menu has stayed close to the original name. Wikipedia says the full menu is served at all hours, that biscuit sandwiches lead at breakfast, and that bone-in fried chicken with sides the company calls “Fixin’s” is the signature for lunch and dinner, alongside the sweet Bo-Berry biscuit and boneless “Chicken Supremes.”

Design and documentation.

A regional fast-food chain is usually met first from the road. Before anyone reads a menu, the brand has to work as a sign on a pole, a shape at the edge of a car park and a colour seen through a windscreen at speed, so the name tends to be set large, simply and in a few strong tones that hold up in daylight, under floodlights and at a distance.

The building often does as much work as the sign. Many chains have used a recognisable roof line, porch, tower or façade so that a restaurant can be identified before its lettering is legible, and later remodels tend to keep some echo of that silhouette even as materials and colours change.

Closer in, the identity moves onto smaller surfaces: the drive-thru menu board, the order screen, the cup, the bag and the paper wrapper. These have to stay legible in a moving queue and in a customer’s hand, which is why names, symbols and colour blocks are repeated from the roadside sign down to the napkin.

Each guide in this group looks at one chain’s name, logo, buildings and owners in turn, separating what independent sources record from what the company says about itself.

A wavy red mark, a big B and no apostrophe.

Until 2020 the brand carried a possessive. Wikipedia says the chain was known as Bojangles’ Famous Chicken ’n Biscuits until 2020 and shows the logo used from 1977 until that year. On 3 August 2020 the company said it was dropping the apostrophe from its name.

Nation’s Restaurant News, in a report by Ron Ruggless dated 4 August 2020, described what changed. Bojangles updated its brand image, removed the apostrophe and refreshed its logo, food packaging and in-store visuals as part of a re-imaging that debuted that month. The refreshed brandmark, the report says, kept the wavy shape and the red colour of its predecessor. The company described the new letterform in its own words: “The large ‘B’ is playful and emphasizes ‘Bo’ – a cherished nickname of the chain.” The brandmark was applied to new packaging, menu boards and team uniforms.

The relaunch also gave the brand a voice. Nation’s Restaurant News says the company introduced a celebrity voice for its advertising, the NASCAR driver Dale Earnhardt Jr., with the slogan “It’s Bo Time,” and that he would also feature the brand on his own social accounts. Wikipedia records the same partnership, announced by video on the day of the name change. Woodward, quoted in the report, presented the relaunch as an introduction to “a modern Bojangles.”

The nickname that the large B celebrates runs through the brand’s vocabulary, from the Bo-Berry biscuit to Bo-tato Rounds and Bo’s Bird Dog, each listed by Wikipedia among the chain’s menu items.

For a design guide, Bojangles shows how a regional chain can simplify a long possessive name into a single word and a single oversized letter while keeping the shape and colour that customers already knew, and carry that letter from the sign to the box, the menu board and the uniform. Compare it with Popeyes, whose guide also looks at a name without an apostrophe, and KFC. For this guide we use Bo red, Cajun orange and biscuit with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Bojangles’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.