Company type | Private |
---|---|
Industry | Casual Dining Restaurants |
Founded | 1975Anderson, South Carolina | in
Founder | Cole Stewart |
Headquarters | , |
Owner | private (1975-82) Krystal (1982-88) Peter Sostheim (???–present) |
Website | pofolks |
Po' Folks (later restyled as PoFolks) is an American family restaurant chain founded in 1975 in Anderson, South Carolina. Between 1982 and 1988, Po' Folks was operated by the fast food chain Krystal. As of April 2024, the company operates 5 locations in Florida.
Cole Stewart opened the first Po' Folks in 1975 in Anderson, South Carolina. [1] [2]
The restaurant was named after the 1961 hit single by country music singer Bill Anderson. [3] Although Anderson initially planned to file a lawsuit against the chain for using the name, he later sold the rights to the chain and served as its spokesperson. He and Conway Twitty also acquired franchise rights to a location in Oklahoma City in 1983. [4] [2] Anderson's country-music themed game show on TNN, Fandango , was sponsored by the restaurant.
Krystal acquired Po' Folks in 1982 and continued to expand it. By 1984, the chain had 102 restaurants in 17 states. Eric A. Holm (now with Golden Corral) was director of construction and accused of taking bribes for favorable construction deals. [5] Krystal later merged Po' Folks with DavCo, a division of the company that franchised Wendy's restaurants. [6]
In 1988, Po' Folks filed for bankruptcy. [7] As a result, the Po' Folks restaurants were sold, and the remaining assets continued to operate as DavCo. [6] Several franchises in the Atlanta, Georgia, area continued to operate as Folks Southern Kitchens until that chain closed in the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic. [8] As of June 2023, [update] there are five PoFolks locations remaining in Florida (in Callaway, Lynn Haven, Niceville, Pensacola and St. Petersburg), purchased after the corporation was liquidated in 1988.
In the 1980s, actor Burt Reynolds partnered with Killen Music Group owner Buddy Killen to invest in Po' Folks. [9] The failure of the chain, along with the failure of another restaurant chain Killen-Reynolds invested in, personally cost Reynolds a $20 million loss. [10]
Arthur Treacher's Fish & Chips is an American fast food seafood restaurant and former chain. At the peak of its popularity in the late 1970s, it had 826 stores. However, as of March 2023, there were only three stand-alone Arthur Treacher's locations remaining. The menu offers fried seafood or chicken, accompanied by chips.
Burton Leon Reynolds Jr. was an American actor and considered a sex symbol and icon of 1970s American popular culture. Reynolds first rose to prominence when he starred in television series such as Gunsmoke (1962–1965), Hawk (1966), and Dan August (1970–1971). He had leading roles in films such as Navajo Joe (1966) and 100 Rifles (1969), and his breakthrough role was as Lewis Medlock in Deliverance (1972).
Quiz Holdings, LLC, doing business as Quiznos, is an American franchised fast-food restaurant based in Denver that specializes in offering toasted submarine sandwiches. It was founded in 1981 by Jimmy Lambatos and sold to Rick and Richard Schaden ten years later. It then grew to nearly 5,000 restaurants; by 2013, Quiznos was the second-largest submarine sandwich shop chain in North America, behind Subway. It filed for bankruptcy in 2014; by 2016, it had dropped to ninth place, and the number of Quiznos locations in the United States fell from a 2007 high of 4,700 to just 400 a decade later.
Boston Market Corporation, known as Boston Chicken until 1995, is an American fast casual restaurant chain headquartered in Golden, Colorado. Since 2020, it has been owned by the Rohan Group.
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.
Red Lobster Hospitality, LLC is an American casual dining restaurant chain headquartered in Orlando, Florida. The company has operations across most of the United States and Canada, as well as in China, Ecuador, Hong Kong, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, Philippines, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates; as of June 23, 2020, the company had 719 locations worldwide. Golden Gate Capital was Red Lobster's parent company after it was acquired from Darden Restaurants on July 28, 2014. Seafood supplier Thai Union acquired a 25 percent stake in the company in 2016 for a reported $575 million, and in 2020 purchased the remaining portion from GGC.
Friendly's is a restaurant chain on the East Coast of the United States. The first location, selling ice cream cones, was in Springfield, Massachusetts, opened in 1935. It was founded by brothers S. Prestley Blake and Curtis Blake. It has 10,000 employees. George Michel is the CEO. It offers diner-style cuisine and highlights its 22 ice cream flavors. Many locations offer an ice-cream only take-out window alongside of the table service option. Friendly's restaurants are found in Massachusetts, Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania. Its ice cream is also sold in some East Coast supermarkets.
Shoney's is an American restaurant chain headquartered in Nashville, Tennessee. As of April 2024, the company operates 58 locations in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, and West Virginia.
Village Inn is a casual-dining restaurant chain in the United States. Its restaurants are known for their breakfast menu items. Also, they feature a variety of salads, sandwiches, burgers, melts, and dinner items. Their pies have won numerous awards from the American Pie Council.
Sizzler USA Restaurants, Inc., doing business as Sizzler, is a United States-based restaurant chain with headquarters in Mission Viejo, California, with locations mainly in California, plus some in the nearby states of Washington, Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico, Idaho, Utah, Oregon and Puerto Rico. It is known for steak, seafood, and salad bar items.
Bennigan's is an Irish pub-themed American casual dining restaurant chain founded in 1976 in Atlanta by restaurateur Norman E. Brinker as one of America's original casual dining concepts. The chain operated under the restaurant division of Pillsbury for most of its history, until Pillsbury was bought out by the British liquor conglomerate Grand Metropolitan. Due to laws preventing liquor manufacturers from also operating liquor sellers, the chain was sold to Texas-based Metromedia restaurants, until the company filed for bankruptcy in 2008. The chain then went through a series of restructuring and ownership changes until it was purchased by Legendary Restaurant Brands, LLC in 2015. The company is now operating out of Dallas, Texas.
Cheeseburger in Paradise was a casual dining theme restaurant chain in the United States that operated between 2002 and 2020. The chain started in 2002 as a partnership of American musician Jimmy Buffett's company, the Orlando, Florida-based Margaritaville Holdings LLC, and OSI Restaurant Partners, with Buffett licensing the name and Outback Steakhouse operating the franchising of restaurants. After a change of ownership in 2012, most of the restaurants were closed by 2014. The last location closed in September 2020.
Kona Grill, Inc. is an upscale casual restaurant company based in Denver, Colorado serving American cuisine, sushi, and cocktails. The company owns and operates around 40 restaurants in 23 U.S. states, as well as three international locations operating under franchise agreements. In 2019, STK Parent company, One Hospitality Group purchased Kona Grill for $25 million.
Lum's was an American family restaurant chain based in Florida with additional locations in several states. It was founded in 1956 in Miami Beach, Florida, by Stuart and Clifford S. Perlman when they purchased Lum's hot dog stand for $10,000. Over the next few years, the Perlman brothers opened three additional Lum's restaurants, for a total of four by 1961.
SPB Hospitality is a multi-brand restaurant operator headquartered in Houston, Texas. The company owns several casual dining restaurant chain brands, including Logan's Roadhouse, Old Chicago Pizza + Taproom, J. Alexander's, Stoney River Steak House, Krystal Restaurants, Gordon Biersch Brewery Restaurants, and Rock Bottom Restaurants Breweries. As of November 2019, CraftWorks owned and operated over 390 restaurants in the United States, but all of its owned-and-operated locations closed by March 2020, after a Chapter 11 bankruptcy followed immediately by the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States, and CraftWorks and terminated its 18,000 employees, leaving fewer than 25 employed. On June 12, 2020, SPB Hospitality purchased Craftworks businesses out of bankruptcy for $93 million.
Edison Brothers Stores, Inc., was a retail conglomerate based in St. Louis, Missouri. It operated numerous retail chains mainly located in shopping malls, mostly in the fields of shoes, clothing and entertainment, with Bakers Shoes as its flagship chain. The company was liquidated in 1999, though some of the chains it operated continued under different owners.
"Po' Folks" is a song written and recorded by American country singer-songwriter Bill Anderson. It was released as a single in June 1961 via Decca Records and became a major hit.