Jack's
| Restaurant | |
| Industry | Fast food |
| Founded | 1960 |
| Headquarters | Homewood, Alabama, United States |
Key people | Jack Caddell (founder) |
| Products | Fast food (including hamburgers, fried chicken, french fries, soda, milkshakes, breakfast) |
| Parent | Jack's Family Restaurants, LP |
| Website | eatatjacks.com |
Jack's (corporate headquarters: Homewood, Alabama), originally known as Jack's Hamburgers, also known as Jack's Family Restaurants, Inc. is a fast food restaurant chain with locations in several southeastern states. It was founded in November 1960 by Jack Caddell as a single walk-up stand in Homewood, Alabama, a suburb of Birmingham.
History
The original menu featured items such as fifteen-cent hamburgers and fries, twenty-cent shakes, and a twenty-cent "Fish-On-A-Bun." Jack's rapidly expanded and by the mid-1960s, there were at least nine locations in the Birmingham area and additional stores as far 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, 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 1989, LaRussa purchased the total franchise rights to the Jack's concept.
In 2006 there were approximately 76 Jack's locations across Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, and Georgia. Jack's Family Restaurants, Inc. is still a privately held company with one franchisee, Manna Enterprises, Inc. The original Jack's in Homewood is still present and was recently renovated.
As of 2013, there are 120 locations across the South.
2016 - There are 134 stores located in Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi and Tennessee with several in the building process.
Trademark design
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 featured "Jack's" in five individual white rectangles with the word "Hamburgers" on a separate sign underneath. 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.
See also
- Milo's Hamburgers, another Alabama-based burger joint similar to Jack's
References
- Hollis, Tim (November 13, 2010). "Back to Jack's". Birmingham Magazine. Retrieved November 21, 2010.
- "Jack's". BhamWiki. July 26, 2006. Retrieved August 1, 2006.
- "Jack's Hamburgers". Birmingham Rewound. Retrieved October 23, 2010.