Ground Round
Encyclopedia
- This article is about the restaurant chain. You may be looking for round steakRound steakA round steak is a steak from the round primal cut of beef. Specifically, a round steak is the eye round, bottom round, and top round still connected, with or without the "round" bone , and may include the knuckle , depending on how the round is separated from the loin. This is a lean cut and it...
or ground beefGround beefBeef mince, ground beef, hamburger meat , hamburg or minced meat is a minced meat food, made of beef finely chopped by a mincer. It is used in many recipes including hamburgers and cottage pie...
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Ground Round Grill & Bar, an American casual dining restaurant, was founded in 1969 by Howard Johnson's
Howard Johnson's
Howard Johnson's is a chain of hotels and restaurants, located primarily throughout the United States and Canada. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, Howard Johnson's was the largest restaurant chain in the United States, with over 1,000 restaurants...
. As of January 17, 2010 Ground Round is owned by Independent Owners Cooperative, LLC, a group of 30 franchisee owners. Independent Owners Cooperative, LLC is located in Freeport, Maine. Currently, Ground Round has 30 locations in 13 states.
Ground Round was well known in the 1970s and 1980s for its children's parties, showing old time silent movies and cartoons on a big screen, a mascot named Bingo the Clown, and for passing out whole peanuts where diners were not discouraged from throwing the shells on the floor, which became one of The Ground Round's more endearing qualities that attracted families with small children; they also often gave diners popcorn with their dinner, rather than bread. The newest incarnation of Ground Round doesn't support such behavior and markets to the adult dining and cocktails crowd, although families are still welcome (a mascot called the Ground Round Hound, an anthropomorphic hound dog
Hound dog
Hound dog may refer to:* Hound, a type of dog that assists hunters by tracking or chasing prey* Hound Dog, a Classic Japanese Rock band. They were active since the early 80’s...
, appears on the kids' menu).
Ground Round was also famous for their pay what you weigh (a penny per pound) and their free popcorn. At one time in the early 1980s there were over 300 locations. Overselling by parent co. Howard Johnson's Inc. led to the near collapse of the franchise in the late 1980s. A fire at the Yonkers, New York location, in which 1 patron and an employee were killed and left several others severely injured ended the peanut shell atmosphere and cost the parent company much in a negligence suit, that was at the time the highest award by a New York State jury for punitive damages. The Ground Round in York, Pennsylvania also burnt down.
In February 2004 the franchisor for Ground Round filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy; in the process, all 59 corporate-owned restaurants (almost half of the Ground Rounds then open) abruptly closed their doors. A group of franchisees joined together in order to buy out the parent company, at the time Ground Round, Inc., and started the Ground Round Independent Owners Cooperative, LLC (GR IOC).