Thursday, June 30, 2005

Bangor, Maine Hojos Visit June 2005

Wanted to put something new up here. I apologize for the large stretch of idle time.

End of June I drove to Bangor, Maine to check out the Howard Johnson's up there. Left here at 2:30pm and got there at 9:30pm. By no means was this a trip you should take as a day trip, but I did :-).

Had a Buffalo Chicken sandwich that was out of this world (not a hojo's original, nothing on the menu was except...) and ordered ice cream, peppermint stick. I know when it's original or not. The waitress brought me mint chip, though. For a second, I figured "ok, this is not original, they call this flavor mint chip".. but then I studied the taste. I knew this was real! I ate a little of it and called the waitress back to point out the error, and she took away the mint and brought out the peppermint stick. Sure enough it was the real deal! I had them pull the tub out of the freezer for my own visual confirmation.

Spoke with the manager who I learned was only on the job for 3 weeks. She indicated to me that there was no word of her potentially losing her job to a sell out any time soon. From one of the waitresses I learned that Hooters had attempted a buy out but pulled out of the market due to it's population size. Hooters will only go into metro markets > 500,000 people, per this info.

The layout of the restaurant inside is original. It appears the furniture is landmark, although I didn't actually confirm this. There is glass atrium over the dairy bar which is different than usual.

Unfortunately I forgot my digital camera on this trip, but did have my cell phone and a throw-away to snap some pics. I'll post them soon on a separate section of retailhistory.com :-)

Stopped at Wal-Mart, bought a small mirror so I could take out my contacts, a Snapple energy drink that I must add worked very well, and left town about 11:00pm. Pulled into my driveway at about 6am.