Speaking of this thread's other topic, Howard Johnson's, what about the possibility of HoJo's coming back? They're down to one restaurant, so really, expanding to two or three would be a major expansion. What about becoming a chain in their local area or even a regional chain?
This kind of topic is something I've been thinking about for awhile. Businesses that bounce back from near-extinction. It doesn't happen often. For me, it doesn't have to be a business going back to what they were. It could be a once well known business that comes back as a smaller but stable brand. I think, but am not sure, that the Roy Rogers restaurants are an example of that.
The problem is too many people living equate the name Howard Johnsons with bad food and worse service. The best solution MIGHT be to sell off the name, but who would want it?
And getting the rights to an "old name" can have its problems too. IIRC, a small mid-sized Midwestern passenger airline just starting up got the idea of buying the name "Pan-Am", in the hopes of drawing more attention and more customers.
But they'd scarcely opened their doors for business when the ramparts were stormed by greedy lawyers holding warrants and seizure orders demanding "re-dress/compensation" for all of the old debts of the long since defunct Pan-Am corporation. In the end, the poor little company went bankrupt under an avalanche of spurious lawsuits, the original claimants got nothing, and whatever $$$ that was left went to the lawyers. NOT the best day for the reputation of the legal profession, and a screaming example of the need for tort reform. Which for the record I myself oppose. But in the case of examples like this...
This is why you will never see anyone offer $$$ for the rights to the names of W.T.Grant's, TWA, Braniff's, People Express, and Chicken Delight. (1)
1) Actually, I THINK there may have been a brief attempt to use the name TWA, but don't hold me to that.
