Applebee's, which was just different enough from their first choice. A second location was opened in Atlanta before T. Palmer's ownership group sold the restaurant concept in Bob Evans began producing sausage on his farm in for a stool diner he owned in southeastern Ohio. His patrons raved about the sausage, prompting Evans to enter the sausage-making business on a larger scale.
Bob Evans Farms was launched in , and when the number of visitors to his farm began to increase, Evans saw an opportunity. Evans opened a small restaurant called the Sausage Shop in front of his brick farmhouse in Rio Grande, Ohio, in The Sausage Shop is considered the first of Bob Evans' now-famous chain restaurants.
Today, the chain has grown to more than restaurants. Mental Floss: Why Mr. Rogers was the best neighbor ever. In , Oscar and Evelyn Overton moved from Detroit to a suburb of Los Angeles to launch a wholesale bakery specializing in cheesecakes. Six years later, the Overton's son, David, opened a salad and sandwich shop in Beverly Hills that featured 10 flavors of his mom's cheesecake.
One of the main purposes of the shop was to get local restaurateurs to carry the Overton's cheesecake in their own establishments, but it turned into a booming business of its own.
Overton opened a second restaurant in Marina Del Rey in The rest was history. By , 13 additional Cracker Barrel stores had opened. The goal of the original Cracker Barrel was to provide a place for motorists to fill their tanks and their stomachs, and the inspiration for the concept came from the general stores that Evins frequented as a child.
According to the Cracker Barrel website, goods such as crackers were shipped to these stores in barrels, and when the barrels were empty, the base was often used for a checkerboard. So they sat around their kitchen table one night and began looking through names to find one that suited their concept. The name Appleby quickly rose to the top and had a premium business name sound to it, but when T. However, they soon found out that both were taken by other eateries as well so they decided to scratch them off their list.
And just like that—T. The name was different enough from the restaurant that registered the name before them that George State Incorporations had no choice but to give it to them. Though the restaurant was an immediate success, Bill and T. Gustin, though, would be the driving force behind Applebee's stellar gains during the next five years. He had started his career as a teenager, toiling in his brother's Birmingham, Alabama, barbecue hut.
After that, he served a year stint with Schlitz Brewing Co. In a article in the Nation's Restaurant News, Gustin discussed the impact of his mentor at Schlitz, Tom Rupus: 'Tom Rupus, vice president of sales when I was at Schlitz, had a huge impact on the direction of my career. Gustin was hired away from Schlitz by ABA Distributors, a wholesale beer distributor in Kansas City, where he served as chairman, president, and director.
From there, he moved into foodservice as chairman of Juneau Holding Co. Gustin wanted to expand his Taco Bell chain but was told that the company was not issuing any more territory rights.
At that point he began considering the up-and-coming Applebee's. Gustin flew to Atlanta, checked out the Applebee's concept, liked what he saw, and worked out a deal to become the organization's third franchisee.
Gustin also took the advice of then-chairman John Hamra, and began selling off his Taco Bell holdings. He opened his first Applebee's in The success of that store prompted him to open six more outlets during the next several months. Then, in January , he teamed up with Hamra to buy Applebee's from W.
The increase was largely the result of new restaurants; the Applebee's chain grew to 88 units by the end of and then to stores by mid To sustain that growth, Gustin and Hamra had taken Applebee's public early in After the offering, Gustin announced that Applebee's would soon be opening an additional 70 franchise units, news which boosted Applebee's stock price.
Unfortunately, the investment capital needed to open the outlets failed to materialize and only 39 of the restaurants were opened. Scrambling in to raise capital in a recessionary economy, Gustin was finally able to get a loan guarantee from Bell Atlantic, and the cash flow resumed.
He recruited new franchisees to add to the company's existing base of about 50, and the Applebee's chain began to sprawl across the United States. In , in fact, Applebee's was selected by Barron's as a small company with a five-year high-growth potential because of its management strategy and vision.
Going into , Applebee's was operating about outlets, roughly 85 percent of which were franchised and 15 percent of which were owned by Applebee's International. The reasons for Applebee's success were several. The foundation of the company's strategy was its neighborhood theme, which influenced all operating decisions in the organization. The Applebee's menu depicted a doormat that read 'Welcome to the Neighborhood,' on the cover, and the restaurants were designed to project a comfortable, neighborly environment.
Franchisees were encouraged to get involved with local charities and neighborhood events, and to personalize their restaurants in some way to keep them from looking like a chain restaurant that could be found in any other city in the nation. The benefit of the neighborhood strategy was that it cultivated repeat business from the local population.
In fact, the Applebee's outlets targeted the crowd that would prefer to frequent a local mom-and-pop restaurant than the typical impersonal chain. As part of the effort to personalize the restaurants, Gustin empowered individual franchisees and restaurant managers to make decisions about how their restaurants operated and even what type of food they served.
Two of the core required menu items were barbecued riblets cut from the tip of the tenderloin, and fajitas. The restaurants also typically offered chicken wings, burgers, lasagna, soup and salad, sirloin steak, apple honey cobbler, and cheesecake.
In addition, each restaurant featured a full bar, where Applebee's special apple margaritas were served. Aside from those staples, franchisees were allowed to experiment with their menus and emphasize foods popular in their particular market.
Furthermore, Applebee's wait staff was highly trained to respond to customer's specific needs, and staffers were taught a special ten-step serving process. Importantly, the restaurants were set up to ensure that most people were served their meal within 15 minutes of ordering. Applebee's growth rate accelerated in and By exploiting the company's proven management and operating formula, and by attracting new investment capital, Gustin was able to grow the chain at an average pace of more than restaurants annually.
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