This article has multiple issues. Please help improve it or discuss these issues on the talk page . (Learn how and when to remove these template messages)
|
Jack's | |
Company type | Private |
Industry | Restaurant |
Genre | Fast food |
Predecessor | Jack's' Hamburgers |
Founded | Jack's' Hamburgers: November 21, 1960 Homewood, Alabama Jack's: 1975 Birmingham, Alabama |
Founder | Jack Caddell |
Headquarters | , U.S. |
Number of locations | 246 as of November 6,2023 [update] |
Area served | Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee and Mississippi |
Key people |
|
Products | Hamburgers • Fried chicken • French fries • Soft drinks • Breakfast |
Revenue | US$940 million (FY 2021) [1] US$500 million (FY 2020) [2] |
Number of employees | 7,200 as of 2023 [update] [3] |
Website | eatatjacks |
Jack's Family Restaurants, LP (doing business as Jack's) is an American fast food restaurant chain, headquartered and based in Birmingham. Restaurants feature sit-down dining, drive-thrus and takeout service. The menu features primarily burgers, fried chicken, breakfast and various other fast food items including french fries and soft drinks.
As of June 2023 [update] , there were 238 Jack's restaurants in operation; all corporate owned. The company opens new locations at a rate of 20 per year.
Jack's was founded on November 21, 1960, by Jack Caddell (1927–1991) as a single walk-up stand in Homewood, Alabama, a suburb of Birmingham. This location still operates today after several remodels, the most recent in 2019, and is the chain's flagship store. [4]
The original menu featured items such as fifteen-cent hamburgers and fries, twenty-cent shakes, and a twenty-cent "Fish-On-A-Bun." By the mid-1960s, they had more than a half dozen locations in the Birmingham metro area: the original Homewood store, Roebuck, 3rd Avenue West, Bessemer, Five Points West, Vestavia, Eastwood Mall, Alabaster and Center Point, and additional stores as far away as Mississippi and South Carolina.
In the mid to late 1970s, Jack's was expanding into south Alabama and the Florida panhandle. In the 1980s many of these locations began to close, but at least one individual was having success with Jack's. Benny LaRussa, primarily involved in the grocery business with Bruno's grocery, had purchased a single franchise in the 1960s. In 1979, LaRussa abandoned groceries and purchased a franchise territory of 13 Jack's stores. From then until 1988 he expanded his territory to 33 stores. Then, in 1988, LaRussa purchased the total franchise rights to the Jack's concept. In 2015, Jack's was acquired by a fund managed by Onex Corporation, a private equity company based in Toronto, Canada.
On July 25, 2019, Onex announced that it had reached a deal to sell Jack's Family Restaurants in a deal expected to close in the third quarter of 2019. The deal finally closed in August 2019. Onex did not disclose the buyer or financial terms of the deal, but Restaurant Business Online reported that AEA Investors, a private equity firm based in New York, is the buyer of the restaurant chain. [5]
Jack's specialty is its breakfast. Biscuit sandwiches are the predominant breakfast item, including the smoked sausage, country ham, egg, cheese, bacon, sausage and country fried steak options. Jack's also serves pancake breakfasts, wraps, and a variety of sides, such as hashbrowns, grits, and gravy. For lunch and dinner, the signature items is the Big Jack, a double patty cheeseburger with a cult following, [6] with a variety of side items, including French fries, coleslaw, green beans, mashed potatoes and their famous biscuits. They also offer boneless chicken tenders which are served with a variety of dipping sauces, bone-in fried chicken plates, fried and grilled chicken sandwiches, and a number of salads which can be topped with either grilled or fried chicken. Desserts include their signature fried pies, hand-spun milkshakes, and ice cream. Seasonal and limited-time offerings also appear on some menus, such as lemonade shakes and the Mushroom & Swiss Burger. [7]
Jack's restaurants were originally walk-up stands with a slanted roof and vertical orange and yellow stripes on each side. In the late 1960s, the chain began converting their walk-up stands to full, dine-in restaurants. Most upgraded restaurants featured faux stone walls.
The original signs were on 5 poles and featured "Jack's" in five individual white rectangles on top with the word "Hamburgers" on a separate sign underneath. A small round sign below had the price of the hamburgers, "15¢". Another sign that shared 3 poles and had "Fries 15¢ Shakes 20¢" written on it, and the final sign shared the opposite 3 poles and had "Self-Service" written on it.
In the mid-1970s, Jack's began using new signage featuring the name written on an angle in white inside a red circle; the word "Hamburgers" was dropped. In the early 2000s, Jack's changed the logo from the original, all capital font to a mixed-case font. It still appears on the familiar red circle, but the circle is smaller so that the text extends outside of it.
A hamburger, also called a burger, is a dish consisting of fillings—usually a patty of ground meat, typically beef—placed inside a sliced bun or bread roll. The patties are often served with cheese, lettuce, tomato, onion, pickles, bacon or chilis with condiments such as ketchup, mustard, mayonnaise, relish or a "special sauce", often a variation of Thousand Island dressing and are frequently placed on sesame seed buns. A hamburger patty topped with cheese is called a cheeseburger.
A fast-food restaurant, also known as a quick-service restaurant (QSR) within the industry, is a specific type of restaurant that serves fast-food cuisine and has minimal table service. The food served in fast-food restaurants is typically part of a "meat-sweet diet", offered from a limited menu, cooked in bulk in advance and kept hot, finished and packaged to order, and usually available for take away, though seating may be provided. Fast-food restaurants are typically part of a restaurant chain or franchise operation that provides standardized ingredients and/or partially prepared foods and supplies to each restaurant through controlled supply channels. The term "fast food" was recognized in a dictionary by Merriam–Webster in 1951.
Burger King Corporation is an American multinational chain of hamburger fast food restaurants. Headquartered in Miami-Dade County, Florida, the company was founded in 1953 as Insta-Burger King, a Jacksonville, Florida–based restaurant chain. After Insta-Burger King ran into financial difficulties, its two Miami-based franchisees David Edgerton (1927–2018) and James McLamore (1926–1996) purchased the company in 1959 and renamed it "Burger King". Over the next half-century, the company changed hands four times and its third set of owners, a partnership between TPG Capital, Bain Capital, and Goldman Sachs Capital Partners, took it public in 2002. In late 2010, 3G Capital of Brazil acquired a majority stake in the company in a deal valued at US$3.26 billion. The new owners promptly initiated a restructuring of the company to reverse its fortunes. 3G, along with its partner Berkshire Hathaway, eventually merged the company with the Canadian-based doughnut chain Tim Hortons under the auspices of a new Canadian-based parent company named Restaurant Brands International.
Jack in the Box is an American fast-food restaurant chain founded in 1951, by Robert O. Peterson in San Diego, California, where it is headquartered. The chain has over 2,200 locations, primarily serving the West Coast of the United States. Restaurants are also found in large urban areas outside the West Coast, as well as two in Guam. The company also formerly operated the Qdoba Mexican Grill chain until Apollo Global Management bought the chain in December 2017.
Whataburger is an American regional fast food restaurant chain, headquartered and based in San Antonio, Texas, that specializes in hamburgers. Founded by Harmon Dobson and Paul Burton, it opened its first restaurant in Corpus Christi, Texas in 1950. Family-owned by the Dobsons until 2019, the chain is now managed by the private equity firm BDT & MSD Partners; the Dobson family still holds a small stake.
Hardee's Restaurants LLC is an American fast-food restaurant chain operated by CKE Restaurants Holdings, Inc. ("CKE") with locations primarily in the Southern and Midwestern United States. The company has evolved through several corporate ownerships since its establishment in 1960 in North Carolina.
Hungry Jack's Pty Ltd. is an Australian fast food franchise of the Burger King Corporation. It is a wholly owned subsidiary of Competitive Foods Australia, a privately held company owned by Jack Cowin. Hungry Jack's owns and operates or sub-licenses all of the Burger King/Hungry Jack's restaurants in Australia.
Krystal is an American regional fast food restaurant chain headquartered in Dunwoody, Georgia, with restaurants in the Southeastern United States and Puerto Rico. It is known for its small, square hamburgers, called sliders in places other than the Southeast, with steamed-in onions. Krystal moved its headquarters from Chattanooga, Tennessee, where it had been based since 1932, to the Atlanta suburb of Dunwoody in early 2013.
LOTTERIA is a South Korean company that operates a chain of fast food restaurants in East Asia, having opened its first restaurant in Tokyo in September 1972. Taking its name from its parent company, Lotte Corporation, it currently has franchises in Japan, South Korea, Indonesia, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, and Myanmar. The origin of the name is a combination of corporate names Lotte and Cafeteria.
Harvey's is a fast food restaurant chain operating in Canada, with locations in every province except British Columbia. It serves hamburgers, poutine, hot dogs, french fries, onion rings, and other traditional Canadian fast-food fare. The chain is owned by Recipe Unlimited.
Blake's Lotaburger is a fast food restaurant chain, based in Albuquerque, New Mexico, with 75 locations in the Southwestern United States, mostly located in New Mexico, as well as Tucson, Arizona, and El Paso, Texas. Their menu focuses on New Mexico green chile topped hamburgers and french fries, as well as New Mexican foods such as breakfast burritos.
A&W is a fast-food restaurant chain in Canada, franchised by A&W Food Services of Canada, Inc.
When the predecessor of international fast food restaurant chain Burger King (BK) first opened in 1953, its menu predominantly consisted of hamburgers, French fries, soft drinks, milkshakes, and desserts. After being acquired by its Miami, Florida franchisees and renamed in 1954, BK began expanding its menu by adding the Whopper sandwich in 1957, and has since added non-beef items such as chicken, fish, and vegetarian offerings, including salads and meatless sandwiches. Other additions include a breakfast menu and beverages such as Icees, juices, and bottled waters. As the company expanded both inside and outside the United States, it introduced localized versions of its products that conform to regional tastes and cultural or religious beliefs. To generate additional sales, BK occasionally introduces limited-time offers of special versions of its products, or brings out completely new products intended for either long- or short-term sales. Not all of these products and services have been successful; in 1992, Burger King introduced limited table service featuring special dinner platters, but this concept failed to generate interest and was discontinued.
McDonald's Corporation is the world's largest chain of fast food restaurants, serving around 68 million customers daily in 119 countries. McDonald's traces its origins to a 1940 restaurant in San Bernardino, California. After expanding within the United States, McDonald's became an international corporation in 1967, when it opened a location in Richmond, British Columbia, Canada. By the end of the 1970s, McDonald's restaurants existed in five of the Earth's seven continents; an African location came in 1992 in Casablanca, Morocco.
Wendy's is an American international fast food restaurant chain founded by Dave Thomas on November 15, 1969, in Columbus, Ohio. Its headquarters moved to Dublin, Ohio, on January 29, 2006. As of December 31, 2018, Wendy's was the world's third-largest hamburger fast-food chain with 6,711 locations, following Burger King and McDonald's. On September 29, 2008, the company merged with Triarc Companies Inc., the publicly traded parent company of Arby's; Wendy's headquarters remained in Dublin. Triarc then became known as Wendy's/Arby's Group, and later as the Wendy's Company following the sale of Arby's to Roark Capital Group.
Guthrie's is a fast casual, franchised restaurant chain headquartered in Auburn, Alabama, United States, best known for being the original chicken fingers restaurant. The first location was opened in Haleyville, in 1965 by Hal Guthrie. By 1978, the menu adapted to consist primarily of chicken fingers, signature sauce, french fries, coleslaw and Texas toast, becoming the first to largely center its menu on chicken fingers. Today, the chain has grown to include 48 stores across the United States with active plans to expand further.
International fast-food restaurant chain Burger King and its Australian franchise Hungry Jack's have had a variety of breakfast sandwiches in their product portfolio since 1978. The Croissan'wich was the first major breakfast sandwich product introduced by the company.