Remembering Howard Johnson's, the beloved restaurant chain

It felt like they would be here forever: The pitched orange roofs. The 28 flavors of ice cream. The Simple Simon and the Pieman silhouetted sign. Few things shouted roadside America — and roadside Long Island — as did Howard Johnson’s, one of the nation’s first and at one point its largest restaurant chain.

Affordable and dependable, it was a family restaurant with such middle-class elegance that in the 1940s Long Islanders held wedding receptions there. And one staple, its all-you-can-eat fried seafood or chicken dinner on certain days, helped feed many a family during the postwar baby boom. 

"We always went on Fridays for the $3.99 all-you-can-eat fish fry — sometimes they'd have a clam fry," remembers Perry Resnick, 65, a Manhattan accountant raised in Massapequa Park. As a teen in the 1970s, "We had a family of five and my parents didn't make a lot of money, so this was a very useful thing when you’ve got three kids growing up" — especially since it came with french fries, coleslaw and hush puppies.

Tom Edwards, 73, a former Long Islander now living elsewhere, fondly recalled the fried clam sandwich on a hot dog bun with tartar sauce, saying, "Man, I can taste one right now — never could duplicate it." That may be because the sandwich came "in a special roll," said Ed Martin, 94, formerly of Rockville Centre and now of Venice, Florida, who served as an assistant secretary of education under President Jimmy Carter. "Flat sides, and grilled. That's how their frankfurters were, too."

And of course, there was the ice cream, a panoply of standard (chocolate chip, strawberry, butter pecan) and relatively exotic flavors (grape nut, banana, ginger). "I must have gotten my taste for pistachio ice cream at Howard Johnson's" in Garden City Park, Edwards said, "and it’s still by far my favorite flavor."

In the beginning

The chain grew out of a Quincy, Massachusetts, drugstore and soda fountain taken over by Howard Deering Johnson in 1925. Finding ice cream a big seller, he devised a recipe with roughly twice the butter fat and a creamier texture than most others, and used syrups to concoct 28 flavors. Quickly successful, he opened his first restaurant in 1929.

From a single shop in 1935, he had 132 franchised and company-owned restaurants throughout the Northeast within six years. Following a severe contraction during World War II, he rebounded amid postwar prosperity, expanding across the South and Midwest and reaching California in 1965 to become a nationwide chain. By 1975, there were 929 HoJo’s.

Long Island’s first opened Aug. 27, 1938, at 3000 Jericho Tpke., at the corner of Herricks Road, in Garden City Park — just over the border from Mineola, the locale given in some ads. A second opened in Lynbrook by December 1939, at Sunrise Highway and Scranton Avenue.

Throughout the 1950s, '60s and '70s, HoJo’s sprouted all over the island: 1024 Northern Blvd. in Roslyn, 690 Commack Rd. in Commack, 600 W. Old Country Rd. in Hicksville, the Great South Bay Shopping Center in Babylon and many elsewhere.

Randy Stock, 65, a retired Wall Street executive raised in East Northport, remembers going with her parents and older brother to the Westbury Howard Johnson’s, near where her cousins lived, when she was 5 to 7 years old. "I loved the scrambled eggs with the chunks of ham in it," she said, "because my mother used to use just plain deli ham at home. But this was nice big squares of ham so it tasted better." 

A great first job

HoJo’s also provided employment for many young Long Islanders.

"My first real job was working the counter at the HoJo’s in Garden City Park in ’68," said Alan Tinnes, 74, formerly of New Hyde Park and now living in Columbus, Ohio. "As a 16-year old I was making $1.39 an hour plus tips."

On busy all-you-can-eat Tuesdays and Fridays, "I’d have about $9 in tips and was on top of the world. I’d take home a brownie and a pint of coffee ice cream and life was great."

Other working teens found it handy for a midnight meal. Glenn Andreiev, 65, and Dylan Skolnik, 58, frequented the 24-hour Centerport HoJo’s after a late shift at Huntington’s Cinema Arts Centre, where Skolnick is now co-director.

"The cinema closed around 11:30, so it would've been, like, midnight when we’d finish closing up," recalled Andreiev, a Kings Park film historian and documentary filmmaker. Added Skolnick, "We’d be hungry and options were thin, and that was a good, reliable place to get a meal." 

Howard's end

Cultural historians pin the chain’s slow decline to scion Bud Johnson taking over from his father in 1968. By the late 1970s, quality had slipped, and the rise of fast-food chains in an increasingly sped-up world proved tough competition.

The chain was losing money when the U.K.’s Imperial Group bought the restaurants but not the sister motel chain in 1980. Imperial sold it to Marriott in 1985 for about half of what it had paid, and the new owner shut down or rebranded virtually all the HoJo’s. The final franchised holdout, in upstate Lake George, closed in 2022. The last on Long Island, in Bohemia near MacArthur Airport, closed on Dec. 5, 1993.

But while food and family are what we remember most, HoJo’s could hold other fascinations as well.

As a little girl, "I used to love watching them make milkshakes and sundaes and chatting with people," Stock said. "I like watching people do their jobs. I like figuring out how jobs get done. It's probably one of my earliest memories of being able to figure out the process of things — how the gears turn."

Plus, you’d get a four-pack of crayons to color the paper placements every Halloween, she said. Other times, if you wanted to solve the placemat’s maze or puzzle, "It was usually up to Mom to have a pen. No pen in the handbag," she chuckled, "you're out of luck!"