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Arby's
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Arby's Restaurant Group, Inc. | |
|---|---|
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| Type | Subsidary |
| Founded | 1964 in Boardman, Ohio |
| Headquarters | Dunwoody, Georgia, United States |
| No. of locations | 3,600 (approx.) |
| Key people | Roland C. Smith, CEO Tom Garrett, President/COO Forrest and Leroy Raffel, founders |
| Industry | Fast food |
| Products | Roast beef sandwiches and other fast food |
| Parent | Triarc Companies, Inc. |
| Slogan | I'm thinkin' Arby's |
| Website | www.arbys.com |
Arby's is a fast food restaurant chain in the United States and Canada that is a wholly owned subsidiary of Triarc. It is primarily known for selling roast beef sandwiches, chicken sandwiches, potato cakes, curly fries, Jamocha milkshakes and chicken strips. The company's target market attempts to be more adult-oriented than other fast food restaurants. The Arby's menu also includes appetizers, salads, Market Fresh (deli-style) sandwiches, wraps, and submarine sandwiches.
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Arby's was founded by Forrest and Leroy Raffel in Ohio in 1964, who were determined to own a fast food franchise based on a food other than hamburgers. The brothers wanted to use the preferred name of "Big Tex", but that name was already being used by an Akron businessman. They eventually decided on the Arby's moniker, based on R.B., the initials of Raffel Brothers [1], thus Arby's, LLC, was born. By coincidence, R.B. can also be short for roast beef, the company's main product, a point which was used when the backronym "America's Roast Beef, Yes Sir" was used as an advertising campaign in the 1980s.
After a long interim between successes, Arby's capital had been quite diminished, so a completely new franchise system had to be devised. The Raffel brothers opened the first new restaurant in Boardman, Ohio (located just outside of Youngstown), on July 23, 1964, where they initially served only roast beef sandwiches, potato chips and drinks. A year later, the first Arby's licensee opened a restaurant in Akron, Ohio. The famous Arby's 'hat' was designed by the original signmakers, Peskin Sign Co (they continue to make signs for Triarc). Expansion to other states began in 1968. Triarc Companies, Inc., purchased Arby’s in 1993. As of 2006, there are over 3500 restaurants. Around that time, more Arby's franchises were operated by RTM Restaurant Group than the franchisor, New York based Triarc[2].
On May 31, 2005, Triarc announced that it was purchasing RTM and would move their headquarters from Fort Lauderdale, Florida, to Dunwoody, Georgia. Later that year, Triarc officially bought out RTM. While the restaurant has not been based in the Youngstown area for many years, the chain still has a major presence in the area, including a location on the campus of Youngstown State University as well as numerous sponsorship deals and events within the area.
The nearby Pittsburgh area is also a major market for Arby's, where for decades was the only overlapping area with Northeastern fast-food chain Roy Rogers. Until Hardee's unsuccessful purchase of Roy Rogers in 1990, Arby's had a very minimal presence in the Northeastern United States, especially in the Baltimore/Washington, D.C. area due to Roy Rogers fans supposedly preferring the taste of Roy Roger's roast beef over Arby's. However, since Roy Roger's rapid decline after the Hardee's takeover (the two restaurants were separated when their parent company at the time, Imasco, sold Hardee's to Carl's Jr. in 1997), Arby's has since expanded their presence in these markets.
Denver and parts of the Southern United States are also major Arby's territories.
Arby's is currently franchised by Triarc, who also franchises T.J. Cinnamons and Pasta Connection and once owned Royal Crown Cola (better known as R.C. Cola), which Arby's sold into the mid-1990s. At the time, this made Arby's one of the only major restaurant chains to sell R.C. Cola instead of Pepsi and Coca-Cola.
In early 2006, Arby's Restaurant Group (ARG) signed a contract with Pepsi to be their exclusive soft drink provider. When franchisees' contracts expire with Coca-Cola, they will be required to switch to Pepsi-Cola,[3] the lone exception being the aforementioned Arby's located at YSU because of the University having its own separate contract with Coca-Cola for other university purposes, particularly the athletic department.
In February of 2006, Arby's became the first national fast food chain to claim to not use any artificial additives in its chicken products; along with this claim came an advertising campaign which criticized Wendy's, McDonald's and Burger King for their use of additives such as water, salt and phosphates in their chicken products.
In November 2006, Arby's announced that they were eliminating all trans-fats from their menu, to be implemented by May 2007, being the first major fast-food restaurant to do so. However, as of December 2007, Arby's online nutritional guide shows that small amounts of trans-fat can still be found in some of their products[4].
The chain adopted an experimental mascot in the early 2000s, in addition to the cowboy hat, which was an anthropomorphic oven mitt, who appeared on the company's television commercials and print advertisements. He was voiced by actor Tom Arnold.
Triarc and its Arby's franchise subsidiary, Arby's Restaurant Group, is the largest owner of Arby's franchises.
Arby's is currently sponsoring Matt Kenseth, a NASCAR driver, who was also featured in a television commercial for the company. In accordance with this sponsorship, Arby's has promised to give away free medium curly fries on the Monday following any of his race wins. Customers need only bring in an official race result from a newspaper or website[5].
Arby's is currently in the process of phasing in a new oven toasted subs sandwich line, which is currently available at limited number of stores. This line will be in addition to its Market Fresh line and its classic roast beef line of sandwiches.
Arby's currently uses the slogan "I'm thinkin' Arby's."
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This article or section may contain original research or unverified claims. Please improve the article by adding references. See the talk page for details. (December 2007) |
Due to Arby's always focusing on roast beef and shunning burgers, Arby's was able to grow without any major competition. For decades, their main competitor had been Hardee's, who despite mostly being a burger chain, has always offered the Big Roast Beef on their menu. Arby's also competed with smaller regional chains that sold roast beef such as Roy Rogers and Rax, the latter of which is the closest to being identical to Arby's. Coincedently, both chains were purchased by Hardee's, but later split off because of failures in converting both over to Hardee's. Both are still in existence as independent chains, but pose no threat to Arby's today.
Today, Arby's main competition are sandwich shops such as Subway, Quiznos, and Panera Bread that better compete with Arby's unusual hybrid of deli-like sandwiches while otherwise being a traditional fast-food chain. Hardee's is still somewhat of a competitor since they still offer the Big Roast Beef chainwide, but have placed more emphasis back on the burgers in recent years with their Thickburger lineup.
In all of the ARG stores they offer the following lineups:
- Roast Beef Sandwiches: Junior, Regular, Medium, Large, Super, Beef 'n Cheddar, Bacon Beef 'n Cheddar, Arby's Melt, along with the Ham Melt and the ArbyQ.
- Chicken Sandwiches: Chicken Breast Fillet, Bacon & Swiss, and Cordon Bleu in either crispy or grilled chicken.
- Market Fresh: Ham & Swiss, Turkey & Swiss, Roast Beef & Swiss, Turkey Ranch & Bacon, Chicken Salad, BLT, Turkey Reuben, and Corned Beef Reuben. All of these can be placed on Bread or Tortilla Wrap (Wraps on request only).
- Toasted Subs: Turkey Bacon Club, Philly Beef, French Dip & Swiss, Classic Italian, Meatball, and Chicken Parmesan.
- Fryer Products: Curly Fries, Mozzarella Sticks, Chicken Tenders, Potato Bites, Cheesecake Poppers, with stores given a choice of Jalepeno Bites or Onion Petals.
- Salads: Martha's Vineyard, Chicken Club, and Sante Fe.
- Kids Meals: Jr Roast Beef, Mini Ham & Swiss, Mini Turkey & Swiss, and Chicken Tenders.
- Shakes & Desserts: Vanilla, Chocolate, Jamocha, and Strawberry shakes, although some stores will replace the Strawberry with a promotional shake. Apple or Cherry Turnovers along with optional Chocolate chunk cookies.
- Breakfast: Biscuit, Croissant, and Sourdough in either ham, sausage, or bacon with additions of Swiss or American cheese and an egg patty. Along with this is the Wrap that has the choice of the meat. Some restaurants also offer Toast Stix, Blueberry Muffins, and Sausage Gravy. The biscuit also has an option of chicken tenders for a meat.
- Drinks: With the change to Pepsi they offer the following: Pepsi, Diet Pepsi, Mountain Dew, Dr Pepper, Sierra Mist, Fresh Brewed Iced Tea, and Tropicana Sugar Free Lemonade. At some stores they also offer Diet Mountain Dew, Lipton Raspberry Ice Tea, Diet Dr Pepper, SOBE Energy Drink and Wild Cherry Pepsi among several other optional choices.
Options in some regions also include Homestyle Fries, Potato Cakes, Pepper Jack Melt, and TJ Cinnamons. Potato Cakes have recently been placed as a local store marketing option which is identical to the breakfast lineup.
- ^ http://www.arbysrestaurant.com/inpage/about-history.cfm
- ^ http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0EUY/is_21_11/ai_n13831213
- ^ http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=78265&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=797826&highlight=
- ^ http://www.arbys.com/nutrition/
- ^ http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/southflorida/sfl-225freefries,0,3602654.story