Howard Johnson's restaurants

Also known as HoJo's, Howard Johnson's Restaurants

Cause of death

Killed by a successor

with killed by indifference as a contributing factor

Made by

Howard Johnson's Company

Interstate fast-food chains took the highway traffic the orange-roofed restaurants had been built to catch.

At its peak Howard Johnson's was the largest restaurant chain in America, more than 1,000 orange roofs selling twenty-eight flavours of ice cream and fried clam plates to the interstate. Fast food ate the format from underneath it, and by 2015 a handful were left. The last one, in Lake George, New York, never reopened after the winter of 2022, and it was not even a franchise by then, just a grandfathered licence to use the name.