“From Beloved Beacon to Forgotten Relic: Unraveling the Astonishing Decline of Howard Johnson’s Empire”
But in any event, beyond some of the bad press, declining quality of food, and rise in fast-food establishments able to make their food faster, cheaper, and more convenient, then there was the quality of service and of the general establishment at each location, which likewise around the time of Howard Johnson’s death quickly became inconsistent, as there was no real strong measure ever implemented to insure such, outside of their handbook and apparently Howard Johnson himself spending his time randomly popping around to different locations to inspect them. As a brief aside, Johnson apparently sometimes didn’t feel the need to even announce who he was when doing such surprise inspections, and in one case he headed back to one location’s freezer without a word to the staff, resulting in employees calling the police on him. The officer who showed up dutifully asked for Johnson to identify himself, to which Johnson stated simply, “I’m Howard Johnson.” With the cop quipping back, “And I’m Christopher Columbus.”
But in any event, with Howard Johnson now in the grave and all efforts to overhaul the company not just not succeeding, but seeing it decline even more rapidly, Brennan Johnson and the board decided it was time to sell the company in 1979 to Imperial Group PLC of London for $630 million, or about $2.7 billion today. What Imperial Group got for their investment was 1,040 restaurant locations and 520 motor lodges, only about 25% of which belonging to franchisers.
While there was still time to adjust and fix everything and the Howard Johnson’s brand recognition was almost unparalleled in the regions they operated, little progress was made in a turnaround and, in 1985, Imperial Group gave up and sold off the chain to Marriott Corp for $314 million (about $900 million today). Within a year, Marriott then sold off the motor lodge and trademark to Prime Motor Inns.
