Papaya King founded by Gus Poulos

In 1923, alone and penniless, sixteen-year-old Gus Poulos arrived from Athens, Greece, possessing only drive and determination. He obtained a job in a deli in New York’s Yorkville neighborhood, and within three years he bought the business.

After vacationing in Florida in the late 1920s, he returned to New York with the new business idea. With years of research and making connections with tropical fruit distributors, Gus sold the deli and opened a juice store in 1931 called Hawaiian Tropical Drinks, Inc.

However New Yorkers were not interested until Poulos hired women in hula skits to give out free samples in the sidewalk. By 1935 he opened a second store in Brooklyn and in 1937 it expanded to Philadelphia.

Due to his juice stand was in a heavily German part of town, in 1939 he added frankfurters to his menu, and business boomed. The name Papaya King caught on by way of customers declaring Gus “the Papaya King,” and he officially changed the name in the early 1960s.

By then Papaya King’s the restaurant had become a tourist attraction and the fame had spread from coast to coast and even around the world.
Papaya King founded by Gus Poulos

History of Burger King

In 1952 Keith G. Cramer, owner of a carhop restaurant in Daytona Beach, Florida, acquired the rights to two of George Read’s Miracle Insta-Machines: one made multiple milkshakes and the other was the Insta-Broiler that can cooked 12 burgers simultaneously.

In 1953 Cramer opened the Insta-Burger King in Jacksonville, Florida and he began to franchise his operation. In the beginning of 1954 two marketing and financial entrepreneurs, James McLamore and David Edgerton, launched several Insta-Burger outlets in Miami.

Unlike most of the other fast food entrepreneurs who had limited education, McLamore and David Edgerton both held degrees from Cornell University’s School of Hotel Administration.

McLamore and Edgerton disposed of the Insta-Broiler and created a flame broiler, and in 1957 they introduced the Whopper hamburger which they sold for 37 cents.

By 1959 their strategy of selling a limited menu of hamburgers, fries, and soft drinks worked well enough that the partners had succeeded in expanding their business to five stores in Miami, each one a small building surrounded by a large parking lot.

The owners then set out to form a nationwide chain of Burger Kings, all selling the same hamburgers, fries and drinks quickly and cheaply.

Today the Whopper sandwich is world renowned for its fire-grilled taste and the many ways customers can order it to their liking.

Similar to other fast food pioneers such as Ray Kroc of Mac Donald’s and Harlan Sanders of Kentucky Fried Chicken, the Burger King founders sought to attract investors by giving away excusive rights to large territories through franchise arrangements.

A Burger King franchise originally cost $25,000 including equipment, plus 1 percent of gross sales. By 1984, the standard investment was about $400,000 with 4 percent of gross sales in top of that.

The chain had grown to 274 stores by 1967, 35 of them company owned. Then during the first wave of mergers between food processors and restaurants, Pillsbury, the large food conglomerate, bought the entire company for $28 million.

Two years after the acquisition, the company opened its first franchise in Canada. Subsequently Burger King opened restaurants in Europe, Asia and Latin America. It opened its first Australian outlet in 1971, and other countries followed.
History of Burger King

Subway restaurant

While still in college Fred Deluca, opened his first Subway restaurant in Connecticut in 1965 with just US$1000 borrowed from a friend of the family.

Nine years later he began franchising after opening the first one in Bridgeport, Connecticut. By 1995, Subway had grown to more than 10,000 locations.

The franchising chain opened its first international restaurant in Bahrain in 1984.

Initially Subway did not seek to expand internationally, but when an entrepreneur from Bahrain approached the company about opening a sandwich shop on the Persian Gulf island, Subway decided to accept the challenge of global expansion.

Since then, Subway has expanded worldwide, and generates about 20 percent of its annual revenues abroad.

As of April, 2004, Fred Deluca’s Subway restaurant chain has opened 21,000 sandwich shops in 73 countries and has eclipsed McDonald’s as the largest restaurant chain in the United States.
Subway restaurant 

Denny’s Corporation

Denny’s Corp is a full-service coffee shop chain. It operates over 1700 restaurants in the United States. Denny’s is known for always being open, serving breakfast, lunch dinner and dessert around the clock.

It was launched by Richard Jezak and Harold Butler in Lakewood, California in 1953. Called Danny’s Donuts, the Lakewood, California, eatery pulled in earnings of $120,000 by the end of its first year in operation.

Jezak departure in 1955 and by 1956 Butler created and changed the concept shifting it from a donut shop to a coffee shop. Butler expanded the Danny’s concept to include sandwiches and other entrees using the initial revenue and renamed the establishments Danny’s Coffee Shops to represents the wider variety of offerings.

By the end of the 1950s, Butler owned 20 locations, which he then renamed Denny’s Restaurants to settle a lawsuit from the Coffee Dan chain over brand-name similarity. Denny’s merged with Sandy’s Restaurant chain in 1968 and acquired Pioneer Restaurants the same year, bringing its grand store total to 192.

By the start of the 1980s, more than 1000 Denny’s locations had popped up nationwide. By this time Denny’s targeted more affluent customers by casting aside many of the attributes of the traditional coffee shop.

In 1987, Debby’s was purchased by TW Services, a franchise of over 400 Hardees’s restaurants, and owner of the 200 unit Quincy’s Steak House chain and the Canteen Corporation, a firm with vending machine and airline food-service business.

In November 2010 the first Denny’s Café was opened in Orange County, California. It is a fast food operation where customers order at a counter but have their food delivered to them at their table.
Denny’s Corporation 

Alex Foods

Sonoran immigrants, Alex Morales Sr. began selling his wife’s homemade tamales in Anaheim in 1906 from a horse-drawn wagon.

Morales, a ditch digger by trade grew the concept into a restaurant. The Alex Tamale Company opened this factory in the 1920s at 415 South Olive Street.

Alex Tamale Co. factory

The family run company was finally incorporated as Alex Foods in 1951. As the company came to be known, grew to become a major manufacturer of more than 200 premium prepared foods.

By the 1950s, Alex Foods had a fleet of thirty-two shiny trucks that delivered their tamales and other food products across Southern California, along with distributing produce that wasn’t Mexican food.

Albert Morales, a vice-president in the company, worked for the family business until well past normal retirement age.  Today the company became part of Don Miguel Mexican Foods.
Alex Foods

Applebee's International, Inc.

In 1980, Bill and T.J. Palmer opened a restaurant called T. J, Applebee’s Rx for Edibles and Elixirs in Decatur, Georgia. They envisioned a restaurant that would provide full, quality service, consistently good food, and reasonably prices in a neighborhood.

Soon they began franchising the concept. The Palmers opened a second restaurant and then sold the Applebee’s concept to W.R. Grace and Company in 1983.

In 1986, the restaurant name was changed to Applebee’s Neighborhood Bar and Grill. In 1988, Applebee’s franchisee in the Dallas-Ft. Worth area, Abe Gustin and partner John Hamra purchased the rights to Applebee’s concept from W.R Grace and created Applebee’s International. They later took it public in 1989.

In 1989, the company had 54 restaurants. When Gustin retired in December 1997, Applebee’s had almost 1000 restaurants.

In November 2007, Applebee’s was acquired by The International House of Pancakes.

Today Applebee’s International is the world’s largest table service restaurant chain, with more than 2,019 casual-dining Applebee’s Neighborhood Bar and Grill restaurants in 17 countries.
Applebee's International, Inc.

International House of Pancakes

In 1958, one of America’s most well-known breakfast staples opened to public in a Los Angeles suburb.

The restaurant, whose menu was originally focused on pancakes, quickly grew in popularity. Three years later the restaurant began national franchising.

Little did their founder Al Lapin and Jerry Lapin know that their International House of Pancakes (IHOP) would in fact, gain international level.

They built the first blue-roofed International House of Pancakes and turned the business into a $40 million conglomerate by 1970.

In November 2007, International House of Pancakes acquired Applebee’s International, Inc. for $2.1 billion, which included more than 3,250 restaurants.
International House of Pancakes