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Jack's Family Restaurants, LP (
doing business as A trade name, trading name, or business name is a pseudonym used by companies that do not operate under their registered company name. The term for this type of alternative name is fictitious business name. Registering the fictitious name with ...
Jack's) is an American
fast food restaurant A fast-food restaurant, also known as a quick-service restaurant (QSR) within the industry, is a specific type of restaurant that serves fast food, fast-food cuisine and has minimal Foodservice#Table service, table service. The food served ...
chain, headquartered and based in
Birmingham, Alabama Birmingham ( ) is a city in the north central region of Alabama, United States. It is the county seat of Jefferson County, Alabama, Jefferson County. The population was 200,733 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, making it the List ...
. Restaurants feature sit-down dining,
drive-thru A drive-through or drive-thru (a sensational spelling of the word through), is a type of take-out service provided by a business that allows customers to purchase products (or use the service provided by the business) without leaving their ...
s and
takeout A take-out (US, Canada, Philippines) or takeaway (UK, Ireland, Commonwealth English, Commonwealth) is a prepared meal or other food items purchased at a restaurant or fast food outlet with the intent to eat elsewhere. A concept found in many C ...
service. The menu features primarily burgers, fried chicken, breakfast and various other fast food items including french fries and soft drinks. , there were 238 Jack's restaurants in operation; all corporate owned. The company opens new locations at a rate of 20 per year.


History

Jack's was founded on November 21, 1960, by Jack Caddell (1927–1991) as a single walk-up stand in
Homewood, Alabama Homewood is a city in southeastern Jefferson County, Alabama, United States. It is a suburb of Birmingham, located on the other side of Red Mountain due south of the city center. The population was 26,414 at the 2020 census. History Earl ...
, a suburb of
Birmingham Birmingham ( ) is a City status in the United Kingdom, city and metropolitan borough in the metropolitan county of West Midlands (county), West Midlands, within the wider West Midlands (region), West Midlands region, in England. It is the Lis ...
. This location still operates today after several remodels, the most recent in 2019, and is the chain's flagship store. The original menu featured items such as fifteen-cent hamburgers and fries, twenty-cent shakes, and a twenty-cent "Fish-On-A-Bun." By the mid-1960s, they had more than a half dozen locations in the Birmingham metro area: the original Homewood store, Roebuck, 3rd Avenue West, Bessemer, Five Points West, Vestavia, Eastwood Mall, Alabaster and Center Point, and additional stores as far away as Mississippi and South Carolina. In the mid to late 1970s, Jack's was expanding into south Alabama and the Florida panhandle. In the 1980s many of these locations began to close, but at least one individual was having success with Jack's. Benny LaRussa, primarily involved in the grocery business with
Bruno's Bruno's Supermarkets, LLC was an American chain of grocery stores with its headquarters in Birmingham, Alabama. It was founded in 1932 by Joseph Bruno in Birmingham. During the company's pinnacle, it operated over 300 stores under the names B ...
grocery, had purchased a single franchise in the 1960s. In 1979, LaRussa abandoned groceries and purchased a franchise territory of 13 Jack's stores. From then until 1988 he expanded his territory to 33 stores. Then, in 1988, LaRussa purchased the total franchise rights to the Jack's concept. In 2015, Jack's was acquired by a fund managed by
Onex Corporation Onex Corporation is a Canadian investment management firm founded by Gerry Schwartz in 1984. In September 2024, it had $50 billion dollars under management. History Schwartz founded Onex in 1984 and took the company public in 1987. In Jun ...
, a private equity company based in Toronto, Canada. On July 25, 2019, Onex announced that it had reached a deal to sell Jack's Family Restaurants in a deal expected to close in the third quarter of 2019. The deal finally closed in August 2019. Onex did not disclose the buyer or financial terms of the deal, but Restaurant Business Online reported that
AEA Investors AEA Investors LP is an American middle market private equity firm. The firm focuses on leveraged buyout, growth capital, and mezzanine capital investments in manufacturing, service, distribution, specialty chemicals, consumer product, and busi ...
, a private equity firm based in New York, is the buyer of the restaurant chain.


Menu

Jack's specialty is its breakfast. Biscuit sandwiches are the predominant breakfast item, including the smoked sausage, country ham, egg, cheese, bacon, sausage and country fried steak options. Jack's also serves pancake breakfasts, wraps, and a variety of sides, such as hashbrowns, grits, and gravy. For lunch and dinner, the signature items is the Big Jack, a double patty cheeseburger with a cult following, with a variety of side items, including French fries, coleslaw, green beans, mashed potatoes and their famous biscuits. They also offer boneless chicken tenders which are served with a variety of dipping sauces, bone-in fried chicken plates, fried and grilled chicken sandwiches, and a number of salads which can be topped with either grilled or fried chicken. Desserts include their signature fried pies, hand-spun milkshakes, and ice cream. Seasonal and limited-time offerings also appear on some menus, such as lemonade shakes and the Mushroom & Swiss Burger.


Trademark design

Jack's restaurants were originally walk-up stands with a slanted roof and vertical orange and yellow stripes on each side. In the late 1960s, the chain began converting their walk-up stands to full, dine-in restaurants. Most upgraded restaurants featured faux stone walls. The original signs were on 5 poles and featured "Jack's" in five individual white rectangles on top with the word "Hamburgers" on a separate sign underneath. A small round sign below had the price of the hamburgers, "15¢". Another sign that shared 3 poles and had "Fries 15¢ Shakes 20¢" written on it, and the final sign shared the opposite 3 poles and had "Self-Service" written on it. In the mid-1970s, Jack's began using new signage featuring the name written on an angle in white inside a red circle; the word "Hamburgers" was dropped. In the early 2000s, Jack's changed the logo from the original, all capital font to a mixed-case font. It still appears on the familiar red circle, but the circle is smaller so that the text extends outside of it.


See also

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Milo's Hamburgers Milo's Hamburgers, known colloquially simply as Milo's, is a regional fast food restaurant chain based in Alabama, United States, founded by Milo Carlton as Milo's Hamburger Shop in 1946. As of 2021, Milo's has 20 locations across Alabama. A ...
, another
Alabama Alabama ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern and Deep South, Deep Southern regions of the United States. It borders Tennessee to the north, Georgia (U.S. state), Georgia to the east, Florida and the Gu ...
-based burger restaurant similar to Jack's *
List of hamburger restaurants This is a list of notable hamburger restaurants. A hamburger is a sandwich consisting of one or more cooked patties of ground meat (usually beef) usually placed inside a sliced hamburger bun. Hamburgers are often served with lettuce, bacon, to ...


References

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External links


Official website
{{Fast-food chains of the United States Companies based in Birmingham, Alabama Restaurants in Birmingham, Alabama Jefferson County, Alabama Fast-food chains of the United States Fast-food hamburger restaurants Fast-food franchises Regional restaurant chains in the United States Restaurants established in 1960 1960 establishments in Alabama