Locally Grown Chain Attempts Comeback
By Dana Hedgpeth
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, January 3, 2002; Page GZ02
Nearly 30 years after it was started by Marriott and then sold, the Roy Rogers fast-food chain may be making a comeback in Montgomery County, this time under the leadership of a family whose father helped develop it.
A 2,600-square-foot Roy Rogers restaurant opened Dec. 20 at the corner of Route 118 and Wisteria Drive.
The Plamondon family spent about $750,000 to turn a former Burger King in a Germantown strip mall into the second Roy Rogers restaurant in the county. Another owner operates one in Wheaton.
"Montgomery County is where the chain was born. We wanted to bring it back here," said Jim Plamondon, one of the owners.
"We kept getting letters from people asking us when are we bringing a Roy Rogers back to Montgomery. So we're here."
Plamondon's father, Pete Plamondon Sr., helped start the chain when he was an executive at Bethesda-based Marriott International Inc., where he was in charge of restaurant divisions for 16 years.
When a friend of Marriott chief executive J.W. "Bill" Marriott suggested getting the cowboy movie star of the 1950s to let a restaurant use his name, Plamondon Sr. went to work opening the first one in Baileys Crossroads in 1968.
Plamondon Sr., who now lives in Potomac, said the brand caught on because of the "cowboy himself."
"It didn't need any fancy marketing," he said.
His sons, Jim and Pete, now spend considerable time on advertising and marketing. They've recruited at Northwest and Seneca Valley high schools to attract their 45 employees, and they've advertised in newspapers and on the radio. The theme: "Remember the Roy Rogers you used to love? It's back."
The chain under Marriott was known in its heyday for its simple and good food, the Plamondons said. Bill Marriott created the fried chicken recipe at the test kitchen at Marriott's headquarters.
"We had the holy trio," Plamondon Sr. said. That's roast beef, fried chicken and the popular Double R Bar Burger -- a hamburger topped with ham. "We had to be a cut above," he said. "Everybody can build a building, but not everyone understands the product."
In 1990, Marriott sold the chain to Hardee's Food Systems Inc. They tried to change some of the restaurants to Hardee's but found that customers wanted the Roy Rogers restaurants, according to a company spokeswoman.
Four years ago, Hardee's sold 180 company-owned restaurants in the core Washington-Baltimore region to McDonald's, which has since been converting or closing many of the Roy Rogers restaurants.
Now there are only 29 Roy Rogers restaurants in Maryland and six in Virginia, but none in the District, according to Hardee's, which retained the brand and continues to franchise it. The changes in ownership have caused the value of the brand to erode -- a challenge the brothers are trying to overcome by billing themselves as a family-style restaurant.
The Plamondons are one of the largest franchisees of the Roy Rogers brand.
They now run 15 other Roy Rogers restaurants in Frederick, Hagerstown, Cumberland and Leesburg; each has sales of more than $1 million a year. The family also owns two limited-service Marriott hotel brands in Frederick and is preparing to open a third next fall. They said they plan to open more Roy Rogers restaurants in Montgomery.
One of the main attractions of opening a restaurant in Germantown, the Plamondons said, was the demographics.
"The average household income is higher than here in Frederick," said Jim Plamondon, who lives in Frederick. "We consider ourselves a cut above the typical fast-food restaurant. We wanted to have a little bit higher household income so we could go after a little better target audience."