Two brothers, a Cincinnati pancake house and a string of names.

Perkins began in Cincinnati, Ohio. English Wikipedia, citing a 2011 Reuters report, says the brothers Matt and Ivan Perkins opened a pancake house there in 1957 under the name Smithies Pancake House, and that the business began to franchise in 1958. The same article lists the names the chain carried after that: Perkins Pancake House from 1958 to 1969 and Perkins Cake & Steak from 1969 to 1987. In 1987 the company became Perkins Family Restaurants, and the name on its restaurants later read Perkins Restaurant & Bakery.

Franchisees shaped the brand early. Wikipedia says a Minnesota franchisee, Wyman Nelson, introduced an advertising campaign and an expanded menu in 1967, and that from 1969 to 1978 he brought Perkins and another chain, Smitty’s, together as Perkins Cake & Steak. Working from a headquarters in Edina, Minnesota, Nelson took control of the chain’s development across the country, the article says.

In 1979, according to Wikipedia, Matt and Ivan Perkins retired and sold their remaining interest in the company, including its trademark and distribution rights. In August 1979 Perkins became a wholly owned subsidiary of Holiday Inn, the hotel company based in Memphis, Tennessee, and the corporate headquarters moved to Memphis. Nation’s Restaurant News still described Perkins as “Memphis, Tenn.-based” in September 2019.

In 1985, Wikipedia says, the restaurant entrepreneur Donald N. Smith, who sat on the Holiday Inn board, bought an ownership interest in Perkins and became its chairman and chief executive. The renamed Perkins Family Restaurants was then organised as a master limited partnership whose interests traded on the New York Stock Exchange, and the chain crossed into Canada with a restaurant in Thunder Bay, Ontario.

Private equity, Marie Callender’s and a move to Atlanta.

The 2000s brought a run of new owners. Wikipedia, citing the company’s own press releases of 2005 and 2006, says the private equity firm Castle Harlan of New York agreed to buy Perkins’s parent in September 2005, and that in May 2006 the parent combined Perkins with the pie-shop restaurant chain Marie Callender’s, forming Perkins & Marie Callender’s Inc.

Perkins & Marie Callender’s filed for Chapter 11 protection in June 2011 and came out of it at the end of that November under the control of Wayzata Investment Partners, Wikipedia says, citing Reuters, Bloomberg and the Minneapolis / St. Paul Business Journal. The parent filed again on 5 August 2019, Reuters and Nation’s Restaurant News reported.

On 12 September 2019 Nation’s Restaurant News reported that Huddle House, the Georgia breakfast chain, had agreed to buy the Perkins restaurants. Huddle House said its executives would manage Perkins from Huddle House’s Atlanta headquarters and that it had no plans to convert Perkins restaurants into Huddle Houses or the other way round. Its chief executive, Michael Abt, said in the company’s statement that both chains were built around breakfast.

Ownership then moved one level up. English Wikipedia says that in May 2020 Huddle House passed to Ascent Hospitality Management, a holding company created by the private equity firm Elysium Management, which had bought Huddle House in 2018. Restaurant Dive described the arrangement in September 2023: Elysium, the chains’ private equity owner, had set up the platform later called Ascent Hospitality to hold Perkins and Huddle House and acquire further brands, and the company was pushing franchising, a refreshed prototype and digital marketing. Ascent Hospitality Management’s own website, carrying a 2026 copyright, still lists Perkins Restaurant & Bakery and Huddle House as its two brands, and Ascent has owned Perkins since 2020.

Design and documentation.

The family-restaurant brands in this part of the group grew up beside the road. Their names were made to be read from a moving car, so the sign out front — a tall pylon, a lit cabinet, a roofline shape or a wordmark across the building — often did more work than any printed advertisement. A traveller who recognised the sign knew roughly what kind of room, menu and welcome waited inside before parking.

Inside, the identity carries on in ordinary objects: a laminated or folded menu with the name across its cover, a pie case or bakery counter near the entrance, booths and counter stools, printed placemats, coffee mugs and the uniforms of the staff. Many of these chains also changed hands more than once, so the wordmark, colours and building style can shift with each new owner while the name stays the same.

Each guide in this part sets out who started the brand and where, who has owned it since, and how its sign, logo and dining room are documented — separating what independent sources record from what the company says about itself.

A lighter green, a new name and the bakery by the door.

Wikipedia’s captions date the Perkins logo used before the latest refresh, and an alternative version of it, to 1983–2024, a span covering the Holiday Inn, Castle Harlan, Wayzata and Huddle House years.

That year the brand changed its name. CNN reported on 25 June 2024 that Perkins Restaurant & Bakery would become Perkins American Food Co., dropping the word “bakery,” which had been part of its name for about five decades, while keeping the bakery itself inside the restaurants. The company’s president, Toni Ronayne, told CNN that the new name “really speaks to our American values and the American comfort food we deliver,” and described the whole programme as a “new vibe.”

Colour was part of the change. According to the same report, Perkins kept the green in its logo but moved to a lighter version that “leans into a more of heritage palette that still feels modern,” and the refreshed logo kept a retro feel. Inside, the drab colouring of a 2013 renovation was being removed; remodelled restaurants would have subway tiles on the walls, brighter flooring, new tables, silverware and uniforms, and digital menu boards hung above a bakery case that stays near the entrance. CNN also reported a smaller new-build prototype and a still smaller format, Perkins Express, for sites such as airports and mall food courts, and said a restaurant showing all the changes would open in Orlando, Florida; Wikipedia records that Orlando restaurant opening under the new name in March 2025.

For a design guide, Perkins shows how a family-restaurant name can carry one colour through decades of changing owners and then be refreshed by adjusting that colour rather than replacing it. Compare Marie Callender’s, its partner under one owner from 2006 to 2019, and Village Inn, another pancake house that grew into a pie-and-breakfast chain. For this guide we use heritage green, light green and menu cream with a slab serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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