Hardee’s to Buy Marriott’s Roy Rogers Chain

The Hardee’s restaurant chain will buy Marriott Corp.’s Roy Rogers restaurant business for $365 million, the companies announced today.

William E. Prather Jr., president of Hardee’s Food Systems Inc., said the acquisition will improve his company’s presence in the Northeast.

Marriott said last month that it would sell the Roy Rogers fast food chain consisting of more than 600 restaurants located primarily in the Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia and New York areas as part of a restructuring.

J. W. Marriott Jr., chairman and president of the hotel and lodging company that bears his family’s name, said the sale of the Roy Rogers restaurants, which the company formed in 1968, “will help us to concentrate our focus on our lodging and contract service operations in the 1990s.”

Marriott is also selling most of its other family and fast-food restaurant holdings.

Analyst Daniel R. Lee of Drexel Burnham Lambert Inc. in New York called the deal a brilliant move for Rocky Mount, N.C.-based Hardee’s.

“Every now and then you see a move that makes sense for both sides,” Lee said. “Hardee’s has gained market penetration into the Northeast, while Marriott gets out of the business.”

The deal is the third major acquisition by Hardee’s, which purchased both the 200-unit Sandy’s system and the 650-unit Burger Chef chain in 1982.

Prather said the company-owned restaurants will be converted to Hardee’s on a market-by-market basis. Existing Roy Rogers franchise agreements will be honored, and the Roy Rogers headquarters operation in Rockville, Md., will be maintained with current management, he added.

Last week, Hardee’s said it will pay former President Ronald Reagan $1,000 a minute to deliver a one-hour talk to about 1,400 owners of Hardee’s franchises at a meeting in Orlando on Feb. 5.