Arby’s: We have the meats.
The fast-food joint famous for it's roast beef sandwiches has been around since the
mid-1960’s, and while it’s often lumped in with other fast food joints like McDonald's
and Burger King, it's technically a sandwich restaurant more so than a burger spot, and
thus compares itself to restaurants like Subway and Quiznos.
So let's take a look at the top ten untold facts about everyone's favorite roast beef
restaurant, Arby’s.
There is no Arby
Unlike other fast food joints like Wendy's and ... Wendy's, there isn't actually someone
named Arby that the restaurant is named after, at least not completely.
The first Arby's was founded in Boardman, Ohio in 1964 by two brothers, Forrest and
Leroy Raffel, who owned a restaurant equipment business and thought that there was an opportunity
in the fast food market for a franchise that didn't rely on selling hamburgers.
The original name that they came up with for their restaurant was "Big Tex", but that name
was already taken by another business that also wasn't in Texas (but rather nearby in
Akron, Ohio).
Instead they decided to look at one another for the name, as the Raffel Brothers initials
were R and B, or Arby, or Arby's.
That doesn't really help explain what their signs are supposed to be, unless it's a gigantic
cowboy hat which represents that they never gave up on the whole "Big Tex" idea, that
is if it's a cowboy hat and not a fish jumping out of water like so many online are convinced
that it is (and to be honest, the more you look at it the more it looks like it might
just be that), but anyways, they're not even a seafood restaurant so…
Then again, they're also not a restaurant that serves "Tex-Mex" either, so it seems
like Arby's just likes to keep us guessing.
Well done, R-B’s.
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Arby’s - The "Luxurious" Option
As we said before the first Arby's opened in 1964 in Ohio, in the month of July after
two brothers who were in the restaurant equipment business felt that there was a gap in the
market for a fast food place that served something other than burgers.
Beyond that, they also felt that the fast food industry was in dire need of some class
and thus Arby's was born.
Initially serving only roast beef sandwiches, potato chips and soft drinks, the first Arby's
also attempted to cater to a more "upscale clientele" by focusing on their interior decor
more so than other places like Mickey D’s had (especially considering the first McDonald's
restaurant didn't even allow people to step inside).
While McDonald's had be around for a while by the time that Arby's rolled around, the
idea of a hamburger stand was still somewhat fresh in the minds of many people, so the
ability to actually sit own and eat a delicious roast beef sandwich for $0.69 cents was thought
of as relatively luxurious as most of the stands even at the time only charged $0.15
cents for their burgers.
Hank Aaron Owned a Bunch of Arby’s
When Arby's launched it expanded at a relatively fast rate, opening around 50 new restaurants
per year.
The most famous owner of Arby's restaurants was baseball legend and homerun king Hank
Aaron, who started purchasing Arby's franchise locations in-and-around Milwaukee in the late
1980's (Milwaukee being the town where he played for the majority of his career).
When speaking with employees of his numerous locations Aaron was quoted as saying: "The
most important thing that I want all of us to understand is that we are serving the public,
whether customers buy one Coke or 15 sandwiches, they're all going to be treated the same way,
with a smile and a 'thank you'".
Talk about a home run!
It seems that the investment worked out for him as despite the fact that he played in
an era before the massive contracts of today he is thought to be worth around $30 million
dollars.
A lot of professional athletes make the mistake of making bad investments or starting their
own restaurants, but it shouldn't come as a surprise that a guy with as good of an eye
as Aaron was capable of eyeing a blossoming investment and turn it into a profitable set
of franchises.
Arby’s - Ahead of the Curve on Health Food
Any place that sells piles and piles of red meat may not jump out at you as being one
of the most healthy places on the planet and while most fast food restaurants offer healthy
options these days, in the days of the early 90's it was relatively unheard of for a fast
food joint to offer anything even relatively healthy like salad or anything grease free.
However Arby's has never been one to follow other restaurants and thus it shouldn't surprise
you to hear that it was the first fast food joint to offer a "lite" menu all the way back
in 1991.
That menu offered not only salads but salads with less than 300 calories at that.
Beyond that, in 1994, it became the first chain restaurant in the country to ban smoking
at all of it's locations, something that most cities and/or states wouldn't adopt for the
next decade plus.
After all, you can't keep ordering delicious roast beef sandwiches if you're dead...
Or can you?
Arby’s Best Selling Sandwich
As we've seen thus far, the original Arby's menu offered just a roast beef sandwich, chips
and soft drink (what, no curly fries?), anyways since then one could argue that Arby's has
had the most diverse menu of any fast-food restaurant (sandwich or otherwise) in the
game.
Despite that, though, Arby's is mostly still known for their roast beef sandwiches so it
may come as a surprise to hear that their roast beef sandwich (or any variation of it,
like the Beef and Cheedar, for example) isn't the top selling sandwich they have.Their top
seller is actually a recent addition to their menu in the Smokehouse Brisket Sandwich, which
was introduced near the end of 2014.
Containing smoked brisket, smoked gouda cheese, bbq sauce and crispy onions, the sales of
this delicious concoction have increased year-to-year by nearly 15 percent.
Now, while you could argue that their Smokehouse Brisket Sandwich is a roast beef sandwich
as it's roasted and beef, it is by definition a brisket sandwich.
Surprise Surprise, People Like Meat
With all the meat that Arby's has to offer you'd think that people would be tired of
eating gigantic amounts of meat all-the-time and would instead be asking for lighter fare.
However, as Arby's learned in a weird way, it's actually the exact opposite.
Back when Arby's expanded their menu far beyond roast beef sandwiches they wanted to let people
know that they had the meats, not just you know, the meat singular, and so they started
doing advertisements that showcased the different protein types that were available at their
restaurants like chicken, roast turkey, ham, corned beef, brisket, angus steak, bacon and
of course roast beef.
According to Christopher Fuller, Arby's VP of Brand and Corporate Communications, people
mistook the ad for something people at Arby's branded the "Meat Mountain".
Fuller told The Washington Post that "people started coming in and asking 'Can I Have That?"Like
most fast-food joints you can actually request off-menu items from Arby's and the Meat Mountain
is one of those sandwiches and it'll run you about $10 and also include swiss and cheddar
cheeses on a roll served with an angioplasty.
A Record Setting Commercial
As previously stated in this video, the top selling sandwich at Arby's, at least as of
right now is the Smokehouse Brisket Sandwich, a delicious barbecue concoction that actually
sounds like it'd fit right in at the original name for Arby's restaurants, 'Big Tex'.
The reason that the Smokehouse Brisket is so delicious is that it's actually smoked...
For 13 hours.
To prove that Arby's actually created a commercial that showed the entire process from beginning
to end for the entire 13-hours and while it sounds like the perfect piece of viral marketing
(especially considering that it ended up as a Guinness World Record) it was actually aired
on television as well.
On a Saturday in the city of Duluth, Minnesota, the commercial aired in full for the entire
13 hours and it was tracked that people on average watched for nearly 40 minutes, which
is amazing considering the amount of time people spend fast forwarding through regular
commercials.
Not to be topped on the anniversary of the commercial, Arby's released 500 DVD box sets
that were comprised of six-DVD's, all with the entire 13 hours of delicious meat smokery
combined with a bonus DVD that included eight hours of turkey being smoked.
Talk about food porn.
Arby’s and Pharrell's Hat
If this video proves anything, it's that the folks in Arby's marketing department are really
good at branding their company.
Perhaps the best example of this comes during and after the 2014 Grammy's, music's biggest
night.
It was during those Grammy's that people started to notice that the hat that singer/rapper/producer
Pharrell Williams' was wearing looked an awful lot like the hat from those towering Arby's
signs.
Because of the hilarity that ensued people posted all sorts of pictures of the hat and
even created a Twitter account for the hat itself, which was designed by Vivienne Westwood
and was worth a fortune even before it became a celebrity in it's own right.
Both Williams and Arby's took notice, with Williams putting the hat for sale on Ebay
(with all the money from the sale going towards the One Hand to Another charity, which helps
kids learn through technology and the arts) and Arby's buying the hat for a cool $44,100.
What they did with it has yet to be seen, which probably means that if you've eaten
in an Arby's since 2014 you've most likely ingested part of Pharrell's hat.
Arby’s Sales Figures
Arby's has always been considered a second or third tier fast-food restaurant even if
it's the second largest sandwich restaurant in the business (with an ever increasing marketshare
thanks to it's purchase of Buffalo Wild Wings and the recent and ongoing closing of hundreds
of Subway sandwich restaurants) so it may surprise you to learn just how many sandwiches
the restaurants have sold since the first Arby's location opened in 1964 in Ohio.
According to The Huffington Post, Arby's has sold over five-billion classic roast beef
sandwiches alone, which is a staggering number of sandwiches regardless of how you break
it down.
They've also sold 3.34 million pounds of corned beef and about 1.37 million pounds of sauerkraut,
which kinda makes sense because they sell one of the only rueben's in the fast-food
game.
While Subway recently released a limited edition version of a Rueben all it really did was
remind people that they probably should be eating at Arby's instead.
Either way you slice it, that's a whole lot of sandwiches and considering the fact that
Arby's was able to buy Buffalo Wild Wings, it's a testament to both the staying power
and increasing popularity of Arby's restaurants.
Arby’s Buys Buffalo Wild Wings
Arby's made news across the business and restaurant industries back in November of last year after
it was announced that they would be purchasing Buffalo Wild Wings.
The all-cash deal meant that Arby's would be paying nearly $160 a share for Buffalo
Wild Wings, a deal that in-and-of itself was worth nearly $3 billion dollars.
Business can often be incestuous and Arby's is a great example of that as it is owned
by a few different organizations itself, a minority owner of Arby's being Wendy's in
fact (which owns nearly 20% of the chain).
The remaining 80% (or so) of Arby's is owned by a conglomerate called Roark Capital, which
also owns big stakes in restaurants like Auntie Anne's, Carvel and Jimmy John’s.
Buffalo Wild Wings was previously a private company out of Minneapolis, Minnesota and
despite it's massive growth was facing external pressure from investors to go public and was
also kinda reaching a plateau in terms of growth thanks to over saturation and the lowered
television ratings of the NFL.
Now that Arby's owns Buffalo Wild Wings, they have cornered the chicken wing and roast beef
markets, leaving a seafood restaurant as their next and final acquisition before they can
rest easy having completed the trifecta.
Long John Silvers, look out.
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