A History of Howard Johnson's: How a Massachusetts Soda Fountain Became an American Icon by Anthony Mitchell Sammarco (review)

In an age where the proliferation of licensing one's name and image has become a standard business practice for various well-known media personalities, restaurateur and businessman Howard Johnson remains one of the earliest pioneers in the restaurant industry to build an empire through franchising. By enabling interested entrepreneurs to adopt his standardized business model, Johnson's restaurants spread in abundance throughout the country during much of the twentieth century. Anthony Mitchell Sammarco's A History of Howard Johnson's: How a Massachusetts Soda Fountain Became an American Icon chronicles Johnson's humble beginnings from running a drug store and ice cream stand in Wollaston, Massachusetts during the 1920s to, at the height of the company's success, opening 871 of his Howard Johnson's-themed restaurants and 438 motor lodges across the United States (150).

Sammarco provides readers with a detailed biography of not only Howard Deering Johnson himself, who was appropriately considered the "Father of the Franchise Industry," but also an intimate portrait of Johnson's extensive business network of individuals carrying a personal investment in his company, ranging from the Soffron Brothers Clam Company who supplied clams for Johnson's restaurants; to Lydia Pinkham Gove, who personally invested in Howard Johnson's most renowned location on Queens Boulevard, which was the largest restaurant in the chain and was positioned in such close proximity to the 1939–40 New York World's Fair that every visitor had to pass by the restaurant before entering the event; to the individual employees in each of the Howard Johnson's restaurants whose shared sense of responsibility mirrored that of the company's founder.

While the initial success of Howard Johnson's was predicated on the restaurant's twenty-eight favors of ice cream, fair food prices, and family-friendly atmosphere, what set Johnson's chain apart from his competitors and, later, shaped the business practices of his successors, were a series of business decisions that enabled Johnson to essentially monopolize the restaurant industry. One of these decisions catered to the burgeoning segment of American families in the late 1930's who began to utilize the interstate highway as a means of transportation and leisure. Johnson was able to corner this travel market by obtaining an exclusive contract to operate his restaurants at service station runoffs on the Ohio, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania Turnpikes (69). By all accounts, his most important business decision was to exploit his successful and quite lucrative proof of concept of allowing other entrepreneurs to buy into his business model through franchising. By requiring those interested to front the start-up costs—purchasing all their supplies from his personally-owned commissaries, following a set of uniform guidelines for restaurant operation, and paying him a franchising fee—franchisees were able to open a restaurant with an already supportive consumer base (18). Although franchising has become a standard business practice for most successful restaurant chains, Johnson's decision to follow this business route was initially motivated by necessity—due to the Great Depression banks would not loan him money—but turned into a case of inspired ingenuity (59). Nevertheless, Johnson's decision to franchise his company's image, its operating practices, and requiring franchisees to abide by a set of standardized rules, illustrated in what was termed the "Howard Johnson Bible," allowed him to exert a controlling influence on restaurants not maintained directly under his management. Most importantly, Johnson could draw a portion of capital from those franchisees that would support his own business.

A History of Howard Johnson's is organized into ten chapters, each of which provides insight into numerous facets of Johnson's own personal and company history. The book contains an ample amount of black-and-white, and color photography chronicling everything from the eclectic and evolving exteriors of the restaurants and motor lodges over the...