Cloning of America : Franchising: Bland Stew in Melting Pot?

Arthur Bryant’s House of Good Eats is a matter-of-fact sort of storefront, nestled among crumbling buildings. The beer comes, often as not, in chipped frosty mugs. The ribs and fries are unceremoniously dumped on dull plastic plates by the same hands that emerge from behind the counter to answer the pay phone.

But clocks on the wall keep time in Greenwich Mean as well as Central Standard--a nod to the presidents, actors and journalists whose patronage has put the place on the map.

Bryant’s is unique, a success built on its one-of-a-kind barbecue sauce and its uncompromising Kansas City character. So when the rib joint announced plans to sell franchises--to clone itself and become a coast-to-coast chain--questions were raised.

How do you duplicate a rough-cut original? Would every Bryant’s have a coating of grease on the floor? Extra ribs for patrons who tipped the counterman? Extra clocks on the wall?

Issue Taken to Court

The whole affair has ended up in court, and only time will tell whether Bryant’s joins the purveyors of Whoppers and McNuggets--and whether America loses another piece of regional character on its increasingly franchised landscape.

Franchising’s critics warn that, neon sign by neon sign, highway strip by highway strip, the local and regional flavors of America are blending into one bland stew. And there is no question that hundreds of once-diverse communities now look more and more alike, wearing their branches of national franchises like new designer jeans, with the labels showing.

A traveler waking up in a Holiday Inn, looking out the window at Denny’s and Burger King, Century 21 and H&R; Block, K mart and Kampground of America, would understandably have to check his airline ticket to find out where he had landed.

“Where’s the beef?” asked Kansas City Star columnist Bill Tammeus when the talk of Bryant’s franchises began. “I’m sorry to say we soon may have to admit that it’s everywhere. It’s everywhere.”

National Refrain

The old Holiday Inn slogan--”the best surprise is no surprise”--has become a national refrain. The new McDonald’s in Sparta, Mich., population 3,000, looks a lot like the new McDonald’s in suburban Chicago, population 3 million. The lunch crowds that stampede to the Roy Rogers in Oklahoma City and the Roy Rogers on 5th Avenue in New York may not have much in common--but they bite into identical roast beef sandwiches.

Franchised operations, of course, aren’t limited to fast food. They deliver babies and pull teeth. They give people tans in January, deliver balloons on birthdays and arrange flowers on Mother’s Day. They repair shoes, build hot tubs, install transmissions, spray for bugs, sell real estate and make doughnuts. They do laundry, help people lose weight, arrange dates, clean sewer lines and rent video tapes. When the day of reckoning arrives, a franchised chain called United Dignity will be pleased to bury you.

This cloning of America “is a disaster, architecturally and culturally,” warned Marshall Fishwick, a professor of humanities and communications at Virginia Tech. “It destroys any unique sense of place. Inevitably, it is a step toward the drab, the lackluster and the monotonous.”

Americans this year will spend $640 each at the country’s 323,000 franchise stores and restaurants, up from $379 just five years ago, according to the Commerce Department. But the figure jumps to $2,000 a person when auto dealerships, gas stations and soft drink bottlers are included. A full one-third of all retail sales occur at chain outlets of one sort or another.

California leads the nation in franchises, with 22,413--nearly a third of them restaurants. Texas is next, with 17,537, and Florida third, with 11,182. Such figures do not include the hundreds of readily identifiable chains, such as Hyatt Hotels and Saks Fifth Avenue stores, that have spread across the country without franchising.

Donald Appleyard, the late professor of urban design at UC Berkeley, suggested 16 years ago that “the uniqueness of America would prove to be its ability to erase uniqueness.” That seems true today as mom-and-pop stores disappear into the shadows cast by brand-name chains.

Picture this: A four-lane road, speed limit 35 m.p.h., on the east edge of town. To the right and left are a Holiday Inn, a Western Auto, Best Western, Wendy’s, Print Shack, Dairy Queen, Famous Recipe Fried Chicken, Midas Mufflers, Taco Tico, Insty-Prints, Print Shack, Domino’s Pizza, Humana MedFirst, Pizza Hut, Arby’s, White Castle, Firestone, K mart, Hardees, Ramada Inn, Captain D’Seafood, Kentucky Fried Chicken, McDonald’s, Ponderosa, Burger King, Pizza Inn, Quality Inn, Dunkin Donuts and Days Inn.

It could be almost anywhere.

Stores Hug Road

And there’s more. South of town, hugging another four-lane road: McDonald’s, Hallmark cards, Bojangles, California Waterbeds, Godfather’s Pizza, Command Performance hair cutters, Hardees, Waldenbooks, Wendy’s, Kentucky Fried Chicken, Radio Shack, D’Lites, K mart, Burger King, Baskin-Robbins and Domino’s Pizza.

Welcome to Lexington, Ky., home of shimmering bluegrass, championship horses--and fast food. From the East, the South and the West, the franchises have come, converging here as if churning thunderclouds had collided on a muggy afternoon to rain clusters of red and white plastic, thatched roofs and bright signs.

“The last thing in the world we need here is another Pizza Hut,” Ed Sturgeon, of the Chamber of Commerce, said with a laugh. “It would be nice, though, to have a Greek restaurant.”

Lexingtonians spend more than $300, on average, every year on fast food, a distinction shared by only four other cities: Anchorage, Fort Worth, Oklahoma City and Honolulu.

When White Castle opened one of its fabled hamburger stands in Lexington a few years ago, the police had to be called to direct traffic. For two weeks, hungry Kentuckians stood in line for up to two hours for “fast” food--buying the tiny White Castle burgers by the bagful.

Conflicting Feelings

Americans have conflicting feelings about chains--and the cluttered strips where they are so frequently found. Some see a vibrant example of free enterprise, others a landscape blighted by crass commercialism.

Richard Maynes, a Northern California businessman and frequent traveler, notices the strip on each journey. “It looks the same every time,” he said. “Homey, but boring.”

In Sparta, Mich., identifiable by its water tower and grain elevator, the arrival of the town’s first fast-food chain this summer--a McDonald’s--gave the community a welcome new identity.

“It was a big day for us,” said Don Bradford, a local insurance agent. “We had a number of people over the years ask why Sparta couldn’t have its own McDonald’s. It’s kind of silly maybe, but we just felt we have the sort of community that ought to have one. You haven’t really made it until you have your own.”

A thousand miles away, on New York’s 5th Avenue, the arrival of a Roy Rogers restaurant gave the street of Tiffany, Bergdorf Goodman and Cartier a new, unwelcome identity.

Objections Voiced

“You can’t have these things on 5th Avenue,” said Michael B. Gross, executive vice president of the 5th Avenue Assn. “Let’s face it: You’re not going to have a chic organization or store move in next to a Burger King. I know it sounds snobbish, but it’s true.”

Fast food may be declasse, but not all franchises are. No one is complaining about the three green Benetton clothing stores that have opened in a four-block stretch of 5th Avenue.

Ironically, national chains, including franchises, are about the only stores that can afford to rent space on streets such as 5th Avenue. Chicago’s upper Michigan Avenue, home to a Saks, a Neiman Marcus, a Lord & Taylor and two McDonald’s, is losing its independent retailers to high rents. Morry’s Men’s Wear, a family business for three generations, was a recent casualty.

Modern franchising began in earnest with Howard Johnson, an owner of two restaurants in Quincy, Mass. He sold his first franchise in the early 1930s, and a decade later had 100 roadside ice cream and sandwich shops on the East Coast.

Money a Big Hurdle

Others followed after World War II: The franchising of Holiday Inns was launched in 1952, McDonald’s in 1955 and AAMCO Transmissions in 1958. The selling of franchises made it possible to leap the primary hurdle to opening branch stores--money. Franchisees bought the land and built the store, then paid the parent company for the right to sell its products.

The temptation to spin local success into a national chain is more than many entrepreneurs can resist. The forerunner of Kentucky Fried Chicken, for example, was a small service station and restaurant on U.S. 25 where Harlan Sanders pumped gasoline and did a nice trade with his special recipe for fried chicken.

In Kansas City, Bryant’s barbecue was a similar local success story, gaining a national reputation without leaving 18th and Brooklyn. Calvin Trillin, a New Yorker magazine writer, called it “the best restaurant in the world,” but Bryant’s has never taken itself too seriously.

A typical portion of ribs comes with Arthur Bryant’s famous sauce lavished on with a paintbrush, slices of white bread on the side and the oozing combination wrapped in brown paper. The decor has changed imperceptibly over the years. “This is a grease house,” Bryant once said. “If you go get fancy, then you’re out of style.”

Some Second Thoughts

After Bryant died, in 1983, his niece, Doretha, sold the franchise rights to three businessmen. They envisioned hundreds of tiny Bryant’s dotting the landscape. But so far the plans have not materialized, and Doretha Bryant has had second thoughts about the sale. She is suing to win back her rights.

“I don’t think he (Arthur) would have liked the idea of franchising,” she said recently. “If you tried to improve Arthur Bryant’s, it wouldn’t be Arthur Bryant’s. There’s only one.”

Other notable originals have been tempted to sell francises, only to pull back. Paul Prudhomme, the owner of K Paul’s restaurant in New Orleans and widely acclaimed author of a cookbook on Louisiana food, has thought about it. Opening restaurants nationwide would be lucrative, Prudhomme said, “and it’s frustrating to know someone is doing it and doing it worse than I would.

“But there’s absolutely nothing that can replace the continuous ego massage of watching a customer be delighted and excited about what they are eating. That wouldn’t happen if I had 10 or 20 restaurants.”

Big Chains Growing

However, such holdouts are rare. McDonald’s, for example, opens a new restaurant somewhere in the world every 17 hours. The other big chains are also growing rapidly; franchised food chains accounted for nearly half of all restaurant sales last year.

“Maybe America should make the national bird a Kentucky Fried leghorn and put Ronald McDonald on the dollar bill,” author William Least Heat Moon wrote in the book “Blue Highways.” He had to travel off the beaten paths to find “ma in her beanery and pap over his barbecue pit, both still serving slow food from the same places they did 30 years ago.”

Concern for such little guys prompted Congress this summer to pass a temporary moratorium on the construction of nearly 500 McDonald’s and Burger King restaurants on military bases. Local businesses had complained about the competition.

A few locally owned restaurants closed when Atchison, Kan., got its first McDonald’s last spring. The American Legion even worried that its weekday lunch of meat loaf, fried chicken and the like might not survive the Big Mac attack. But so far, the legion hall is holding its own. “Most people prefer the nice atmosphere and sit-down service we offer,” said Charles Strong, the chef.

‘Our Food Is Better’

At Jerry’s Restaurant, owner Jerry Kukelman vowed: “They’re not going to do us in.” One reason, he says, is his wife’s pies. “Our food is better. When they make a cherry pie they make it with three cherries in it--no exaggeration.”

But the familiarity and consistency of chain stores and restaurants have a natural appeal for consumers, especially travelers. Psychologists say that is a symptom of the stress in society.

“People who are exposed to a lot of pressure and strain at work and at home don’t want to try new restaurants and find a new hotel every time they travel,” said Dr. Albert Mehrabian, an environmental psychologist at UCLA. “They want the familiar, the routine.”

Through slick national advertising and sheer numbers of stores, chains have become part of the cultural fabric. Fishwick, the Virginia Tech professor, called it “fakelore, not folklore. It’s fake culture, economic hype by which people are seduced by wrappers.”

While the result may be a standardized, universal culture, “there is also a strong demand for differences, inventions and innovations,” said Mike Marsden, a professor of popular culture at Bowling Green State in Ohio.

A Few Variations

Although fast food varies little from place to place, Burger King does sell a “mustard Whopper” in Texas, McDonald’s has jalapeno relish in the Southwest and hot sauce in the Southeast, and Wendy’s offers green chiles in New Mexico.

As fast-food chains move into zoos, hospitals, urban centers and smaller towns, they come under increasing pressure to blend into the surroundings. The result has been theme restaurants, with interiors spiced up with everything from antique cars to lumberjack tools to red flannel. An apple motif prevails in the McDonald’s in little Sparta, a nod to the orchards in western Michigan.

“We want to make that effort to be your local restaurant,” said Bob Beavers, a senior vice president of McDonald’s, which is spending more than $100 million this year on renovations. Burger King is spending a like sum for remodeling, to move away from fiberglass to the warmer look of natural wood.

Concern about garish signs tends to ignore an economic fact of life, city officials say. “Every meal means jobs and services,” said Mayor Terry Young of Tulsa, Okla., where five new McDonald’s will open in the next 18 months.

Building Restrictions

Cities are also free to impose building restrictions to maintain control of the landscape. In Freeport, Me., for example, some residents fought McDonald’s proposal to move into a 150-year-old Victorian house. After a long battle, the McDonald’s was allowed to open--but without a playground, a drive-through or a big arch.

As more chains learn to be chameleons and adapt to the local environments, those ugly strips will begin to disappear, said Beavers of McDonald’s. But the food, whether in Seattle or Schenectady, will be the same.

Franchising is “a great American way of doing business,” said Larry Goldberg, founder of Goldberg’s Pizzeria in New York City. “But the food itself is the same old razzmatazz.”

Goldberg longs for the old days. “I want to go to the corner drugstore and get an ice cream soda again.”