Roy Rogers Returns to a Changed Frontier

Washington will lose another homegrown retail brand when Hecht's turns into Macy's next year, but there's another Washington retail icon riding back into town.

Roy Rogers is returning.

Once a dominant and beloved regional fast-food chain based in Bethesda, Roy Rogers was decimated starting 15 years ago by several corporate owners, when the company was at the top of its game. Raided for its real estate and eventually sold off piecemeal to competitors, the homey, western-themed Roy's faded around the same time that so many other well-loved Washington names disappeared: Kitchen Bazaar, Crown Books, Woodward & Lothrop, Garfinckel's and Hechinger.

But unlike those chains, which are only memories now, Roy's never totally died. A handful of hardy franchisees stuck it out through the '90s, scattered here and there -- in places such as Frederick and La Plata -- with no corporate support, making little if any money and often using the same tired logos, furniture and signs that had graced the chain in the 1980s.

Now, though, one of those franchisees, after buying the rights to the Roy Rogers name, is planning a comeback for Roy's, with a goal of 100 locations in the Washington-Baltimore area by 2010. At its peak, Roy's had just under 200 locations in the market.

"It didn't fail because of the brand, and that's important," said Jim Plamondon, the younger of two brothers who are planning the chain's expansion.

Some big hurdles lie ahead, one of which is introducing the chain to younger diners, many of whom don't know that Roy Rogers was ever a restaurant or a western movie star.

"There is an amazing amount of brand equity with people in their thirties and forties," said Matt Smith of Smith Gifford Communications, Roy Rogers's marketing agency. "You start hitting those 20-year-olds, and if [a Roys] is not in their back yard, they don't know the brand."

The marketing budget of the Plamondon brothers -- Jim and his older brother, Pete -- is meager compared with the clout wielded by the national chains they're up against. For now, the brothers are primarily doing in-store and neighborhood promotions.

But perhaps the biggest immediate problem the Plamondons face is finding spots for the new stores they would like to open.

"There's a lot more competition out there now from the fast-food companies, from the fast casual concepts, and everybody's looking for the same thing -- a 2,500-square-foot location, an endcap or a pad spot with a drive-through," said local restaurant broker Tom Papadopoulos. "It's just harder and harder to find."

Nevertheless, several industry experts said Roy's is well positioned to make inroads here because it still has great name recognition in the area; tens of thousands of formerly loyal Roy's customers still live here.