Howard Johnson's

Howard Johnson International, Inc.

Type	Subsidiary
Industry	Hospitality, restaurants
Founded	1925 (1925) in Quincy, MA (restaurants) 1954 (1954) in Savannah, GA (motor lodges)
Founder	Howard Deering Johnson
Headquarters	Parsippany, New Jersey, U.S.
Number of locations	393 (Q4 2015 (Q4 2015))
Areas served	Worldwide (hotels) New York (restaurants)
Key people	Geoff Ballotti (President & CEO, Wyndham Worldwide)
Services	Lodging services and vacation rentals
Parent	Wyndham Worldwide
Website	www.wyndhamhotels.com/hojo

Howard Johnson's, or Howard Johnson, is an American chain of hotels, motels and restaurants located primarily throughout the United States and Canada. Founded by Howard Johnson, it was the largest restaurant chain in the U.S.A throughout the 1960s and 1970s, with more than 1,000 combined company owned and franchised outlets.

Howard Johnson hotels and motels are now part of Wyndham Worldwide.

Howard Johnson's restaurants were franchised separately from the hotel brand beginning in 1986. The food and beverage rights to the restaurant are currently owned by Wyndham Worldwide. Just one Howard Johnson restaurant remains: in Lake George, New York. The line of branded supermarket frozen foods, including ice cream, is no longer manufactured.

In 1925, Howard Deering Johnson borrowed $2,000 to buy and operate a small corner pharmacy in Wollaston, a neighborhood in Quincy, Massachusetts. Johnson was surprised to find it easy to pay back the money lent to him after discovering his recently installed soda fountain had become the busiest part of his drugstore. Eager to ensure that his store would remain successful, Johnson decided to come up with a new ice cream recipe. Some sources say the recipe was based on his mother's homemade ice creams and desserts, while others say that it was from a local German immigrant, who either sold or gave Johnson the ice cream recipe. Regardless, the new recipe made the ice cream more flavorful due to an increased content of butterfat. Eventually Johnson came up with 28 flavors of ice cream. Johnson is quoted as saying, "I thought I had every flavor in the world. That '28' (flavors of ice cream) became my trademark."

Throughout the summers of the late 1920s, Johnson opened up concession stands on beachfront property along the coast of Massachusetts. The stands sold soft drinks, hot dogs, and ice cream. Each stand proved to be successful. With his success becoming more noticeable every year, Johnson convinced local bankers to lend him enough money to operate a sit-down restaurant. Negotiations were made and, toward the end of the decade, the first Howard Johnson's restaurant opened in Quincy. The first Howard Johnson's restaurant featured fried clams, baked beans, chicken pot pies, frankfurters, ice cream, and soft drinks.