Restaurant chains that no longer exist

A lot of restaurant franchises are like that: They either own the land or build the building, or both and you pay rent. That's how they enforce the companies regs (layout, menu, sales, etc.) on the franchises and keep everyone in line. And they take less on the front end.
With Chic-Fil-A, as you noted you need no working capital, so they extract much more of the profits up front.
I wouldn't say they were exclusive. You and your projected store have to fit inside their matrix of projections (location, traffic count, pop. density, income, etc.)

 

Despite having the Camp Hill location a couple of minutes from me, my Ground Round memory comes from soph year of college.

We were playing in the Division II baseball regionals in Syracuse, but the first two days were completely wiped out by torrential rain. We spent about 15 hours over those two days in the Ground Round near McArthur Stadium. I see that GR is gone now, too.

 

I meant in terms of what they are seeking in an operator. I may be wrong and it may just be my experience. They have turned down a number of self-built, wealthy, smart business people who have been seeking the first site in this region (it went to someone who is solidly middle class -- just a nice guy and a hard worker). Maybe Sonic has been turning down the same types of potential owners as it expands, too, I don't know.

 

There's a Friendly's about 200 steps from where I'm sitting.

 

That would kind of make sense to me - Going for someone with more skin in the game, vs. a person that a restaurant would simply be one piece of a larger portfolio.

 

Mother's Pizza is the one Toronto-area chain I wish was still around. Anyone who grew up in my part of the 'burbs in the late-70s into the 80s has fond memories of it.

Plenty of American chains have bit the dust in the Toronto area in recent years: Olive Garden, Applebee's, Outback, Chi Chi's, Chili's, Tony Roma's. Pizza chains like Domino's, Little Caesar's, Pizza Hut hang in there in a crazy, competitive market...Quizno's made a big entry into a market dominated by Subway, with a longtime domestic chain, Mr. Sub, in the mix, and hired Don Cherry as a spokesman but they haven't been able to make much of an impact up here.

 

The Outback and Carrabba's in my neck of the woods are about a quarter-mile apart. The Carrabba's is in a former Tony Roma's, and the Outback company moved quickly to acquire the building after Roma's shut down -- the sign announcing a future Carrabba's location went up about a day afterward. Certainly kept the competition away.

We haven't eaten at Outback in years, but my wife often joins some friends there at the bar for Friday evening happy hour. She's friendly with a few of the bartenders and servers, who have told her employees often are shuttled between the Outback and the nearby Carrabba's because they're owned by the same outfit.

 

It's a great business model: "The Outback waiting line is 45 minutes long. Let's go to Carrabba's instead."

 

There are stand-alone Godfather's locations within 5 miles of me in two directions - one of them across the street from a Pizza Hut. At any given time, the cars in the Godfather's lot are double that of Pizza Hut.

They have a fresh and quality lunch buffet, and they make a heck of a taco pizza, too. For the kids, they have a little game room where you can win tickets at Skeeball and the like, and get little crap to trade in for it. Kind of like a mini-me Chuck E. Cheese without the migraine.

I miss the Bonanza/Sizzler options, though I know it is far from decent food. It's mostly for nostalgia. In Little League, I played for Mr. Steak, a local version of Sizzler. We had more postgame dinners there than was at all good for you.

 

Ryan's "Steakhouse", a post-basketball Saturday favorite as a kid, somehow hangs on.

 

Huggy,

Are there still Hornes restaurants in Ontario? Ate there many a time on our trips to Kasshabog Lake as a kid.

 

Not familiar with that name, might have been before my time.