Johnny Rockets wants to grow its number of U.S. restaurants by tapping new dining trends while maintaining its Americana-themed brand.
The Aliso Viejo-based burger chain said it would launch Johnny Rockets Route 66 with four types of restaurants and work with an outside company to develop two of them.
The types of new restaurants will include: drive-thrus; locations at a planned chain of drive-in movie theaters; a mobile version that will look to draw customers with a “pop-up” movie theater in public spaces; and a fleet of franchised food trucks.
The first of the new types are expected to open by year-end, the company said.
Three of the four are set to be smaller than a traditional Johnny Rockets restaurant, and each will cost less for franchisees to start—from $15,000 to $25,000 compared to $49,000 for a traditional unit’s franchise fee.
The royalty and marketing fees are the same for the new concepts compared with standard Johnny Rockets restaurants—a 5% royalty and 1.75% marketing fee, according to the company.
The chain said current Johnny Rockets franchisees are potential operators of the new types.
“We would love and expect our current franchisees to look at these new opportunities,” said James Walker, chief development officer.
The food trucks in particular are meant for them, he said.
Walker said the idea is for current franchisees to license a truck to expand their reach. The overall goal is greater accessibility to Johnny Rockets.
“We want customers to be able to drive to the corner when they don’t want to drive to the mall,” he said.
Drive Time
The company envisions drive-thrus in neighborhood locations such as strip malls, and in commercial travel centers off interstate highways.
The company wants typical build-to-suit or ground-up developments. Walker said the potential number of those is “in the thousands.”
The drive-thrus could have new fast-casual concepts, such as kiosk or app-based ordering, and a mobile pay option such as Apple Pay. They would also sell breakfast, which typical Johnny Rockets sites don’t.
The company is working with Franklin, Ind.-based USA Drive-Ins LLC on the drive-in movie theaters and the movie theater pop-ups.
USA Drive-Ins plans to develop 200 drive-ins nationally and said a Johnny Rockets Route 66 location would be the on-site restaurant at at least 40 of them.
“The purest form of American film-going is the drive-in,” said Bill Dever, a partner in USA Drive-Ins. “It’s the epitome of retro culture.”
This fits the Johnny Rockets theme, he said. Dever is a partner with Bruce Taffet and Albert Kolkmeyer in the venture.
USA Drive-Ins has two drive-ins open in Pennsylvania, and neither has a Johnny Rockets Route 66. More are planned to break ground starting in November in Pennsylvania, Texas and California, and those are expected to have the restaurants.
Dever said some operational kinks remain to be worked out—locations are open fewer hours but with more people in that time frame so the business approach is different.
Most of the drive-ins will be franchised, he said.
Dever and Walker want one franchisor to operate both the drive-in and restaurant at a site.
Dever said the drive-in locations might use iPads and smartphones for ordering, with delivery to each car.
All four new types of restaurants will offer the same core menu as a standard Johnny Rockets but generally fewer items.
Second Run
Johnny Rockets tried several new concepts in 2010, but the effort didn’t pan out.
It opened a sports bar in Manhattan called Johnny Rockets Sports Lounge that also sold alcohol. A mobile unit was developed for sports venues, and the chain launched a 900-square-foot counter-service approach for food courts.
The bar in Manhattan is closed, but the company opened one recently in Key West, Fla., Walker said.
He said Johnny Rockets is also still at sporting venues such as Yankee Stadium and that the food court restaurant is still available, though the company is not actively marketing any of the three.
“We have different prototypes for different real estate plays,” Walker said. “The four new concepts make sense for the brand now.”
The company had different ownership in 2010; an affiliate of Boca Raton, Fla.-based Sun Capital Partners bought the chain in 2013.
“The earlier formats didn’t really take off,” said Bret Thorn, senior food editor of trade publication Nation’s Restaurant News in New York City.
Thorn said the new effort taps trends including food trucks and pop-ups, and technology such as kiosk and mobile ordering, while staying true to the company’s theme with the Route 66 name and drive-in locations.
“It allows franchisees to show up with minimal cost, wherever their customers might be,” he said.
Johnny Rockets has about 320 restaurants systemwide, a third of them spread over 28 foreign countries, and had $316 million in sales last year, good for No. 8 on the Business Journal’s list of OC-based restaurant chains.
The chain has put an emphasis on overseas markets to grow its roster of standard restaurants in recent years.
