Roy Rogers Restaurants

Roy Rogers Franchise Company, LLC

"Roy Rogers rides again!"
Type	Wholly owned subsidiary
Industry	Fast food
Founded	1968
Headquarters	Frederick, Maryland, US
Number of locations	51
Key people	Roy Rogers (Chain's namesake), Jim Plamondon and Peter Plamondon, Jr. (Co-Presidents, Roy Rogers Franchise Company, LLC)
Products	Fast food (including Hamburgers, Roast beef sandwiches, Fried chicken, and French fries)
Parent	Plamondon Companies
Website	royrogersrestaurants.com

Roy Rogers Franchise Company, LLC is a Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern United States chain of fast food restaurants founded by the Marriott Corporation in 1968 in Falls Church, Virginia. As of August 2015, Roy Rogers had 51 stores: 20 corporate and 31 franchised. In 2002, the Plamondon Companies purchased the trademark from Imasco, the former parent of Hardee's. Under the new owners the company is headquartered in Frederick, Maryland.

Roy Rogers' menu consists primarily of hamburgers, roast beef sandwiches, fried chicken, french fries and beverages. Many locations also serve breakfast.

Roy Rogers is a chain of U.S. fast-food family restaurants, numbering over 650 at its peak, named after cowboy movie actor Roy Rogers. Marriott Corporation founded the chain to replace their older Hot Shoppes Jr. fast-food chain, most of which were then converted. They licensed the name from Roy Rogers and operated the restaurants from 1968 through 1990. The first location opened in 1968 in the Bailey's Crossroads section of Falls Church, Virginia, on the corner of Leesburg Pike and Carlin Springs Road (5603 Leesburg Pike), not far from the Hot Shoppes on Columbia Pike. That Roy Rogers is now a McDonald's. Another Jr. Hot Shoppes that became a Roy Rogers was at 5214 River Road, in Bethesda, Maryland, directly across the street from the original headquarters of Marriott Corporation. Marriott senior executives and members of the Marriott family were frequent patrons of the location (the site is also now a McDonald's).

In 1982, Marriott Corporation bought the Gino's restaurant chain for $48.6 million. The company converted 180 of the 313 restaurants to Roy Rogers to expand in the Baltimore/Washington area. In 1990, Marriott sold the chain for $365 million to Hardee's, a Southern chain seeking to expand into the Mid-Atlantic market again. Hardee's converted the remaining non-franchised locations into Hardee's restaurants; many of the new Hardee's continued to feature Roy Rogers' fried chicken. The conversion of the Roy Rogers chain ended in a customer revolt so serious that they actually aborted the idea and returned the Roy Rogers brand to stores initially converted. The restaurants promoted new flame-broiled hamburgers, but they were not the same as the original Roy Rogers products and they later failed.