Marriott to Sell 104 Bob’s Big Boys for $65 Million

Come summer, 104 Boys will be looking for work.

Restaurant Enterprises Group Inc. of Irvine has agreed to buy 104 Bob’s Big Boy restaurants in California from Marriott Corp. for $65 million. The family-style restaurants, famed for the signature statue of smiling boy holding a hamburger, will be converted to Coco’s and Carrows.

The purchase, which also includes 16 Allie’s restaurants in San Diego County, should be completed by early summer, said Mike Malanga, vice president of corporate development for Restaurant Enterprises.

As a result, the future of most of the chubby fiberglass Big Boys, which stand 4- to 8-feet-tall outside each restaurant, is uncertain. But some could be back before long.

“We will probably end up buying (the statues) and putting them in some of our new Big Boy restaurants around the country,” said Tony Michaels, vice president marketing for Elias Bros. Restaurants Inc. of Detroit, which controls the franchise for more than 900 Big Boys in North America and Japan.

“We have a commitment for 10 to be built in the Los Angeles area in the next year or two, so some of those guys will be staying there,” he said, noting that the company recently opened a Big Boy diner in the Glendale Galleria, at the site of the original Bob’s Big Boy.

Marriott sold the chain to Elias Bros. in 1987 but retained the right to use the Big Boy name. Marriott had bought the chain in 1967 from Bob Wian of Newport Beach, who opened the first Big Boy in Glendale in 1938. Wian modeled the Big Boy statue after a local 6-year-old who, according to legend, used to clean counters in exchange for Bob’s double-decker burgers.

Besides Coco’s and Carrows, Restaurant Enterprises Group runs El Torito, Reuben’s, Charley Brown’s, Baxter’s and jojos restaurants. The company, the nation’s 13th-largest food service firm, operates 514 restaurants with $900 million in sales in 1990, according to Nation’s Restaurant News.