Business View - November 2015 27
the duo bought the Roy Rogers trademark and rest of the
franchise system. “By then, though, it was a much smaller
system because of Hardee’s selling off all the real estate
to competitors,” he explains. “Instead of 648, at that point
it was 75 or 80 restaurants. There were a lot of restau-
rants during this time that were not being re-invested in;
they weren’t following brand standards. There hadn’t been
a parent managing them. So, after we bought the brand,
we either allowed or helped along these franchisees to
exit the system because they weren’t doing the brand any
favors. We continued to prune
some of the underperforming
restaurants out of the system to
get it down to a number that we
felt comfortable with, and then
we started growing it again. We
now have 50 restaurants, alto-
gether, in the chain - 23 company
restaurants and 27 franchises.”
And that brings this particular
Roy Rogers saga up to date. To-
day, it’s apparent that the Pla-
mondon brothers have finally
caught up with the runaway jeep,
and the Roy Rogers system is,
once again, under control. In
fact, the family-owned enter-
prise, Plamondon Companies,
is doing well and is expecting to
do even better. “This has been a
banner year in terms of growth,”
says Plamondon. “We’ve had
three restaurants open this year
– one company-operated restau-
rant and two franchise restau-
rants. We’re on pace to have two
more franchise restaurants open
before the end of the year in New
Jersey and then, in the first quar-
ter of next year, we’ll have two franchise restaurants in
Maryland open and maybe an additional franchise restau-
rant in New Jersey.
“Last year, we opened our first in-line restaurant, without
a drive-through.” (Roy Rogers Restaurants traditionally
sit on their own stand-alone properties. An in-line unit fits
within an existing strip mall or shopping center.) “That’s a
direction that we’re going to explore a little bit further, be-
cause the investment to build one of those is less and as
FRANCHISE
