Archie's Family Restaurants facts for kids

Archie's Family Restaurants was a chain of restaurants in the United States. These restaurants were inspired by the famous characters from Archie Comics, like Jughead Jones who loves hamburgers! The front of the restaurants often showed Jughead happily eating a hamburger.

How Archie's Restaurants Started

Around 1972, the company that owned Archie Comics, Archie Enterprises, Inc., wanted to try something new. They decided to get into the food business. A company called BarKo Group, Inc., owned by Barbara and Gary Kovacs, became interested. They bought shares in the Archie companies, and in return, BarKo Group got the job of creating and running these new restaurants.

First Restaurants and Comics

In 1973, the very first Archie's restaurant opened its doors in Joliet, Illinois. It was located on the corner of Hammes and Jefferson streets. To celebrate, a special 8-page comic book story was made. It was called "Archie's Restaurant" and appeared in the 136th issue of Life with Archie comic. This comic was special because it featured real people from Joliet, like Maurice Berlinsky, who was the mayor at the time, and Bob Anderson from a local bank. The Joliet restaurant was also mentioned in another comic story called "A Share of Happening," which was in Everything's Archie in October 1973.

The next Archie's restaurant opened in Merrillville, Indiana. By May 1974, there were plans to open two more restaurants in Matteson and Homewood. The Kovacs family hoped to open many Archie's restaurants within five years across states like Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and New York.

Why They Closed

Sadly, the two restaurants that opened were not managed very well. Because of these problems, Archie Comics decided to close them down. They also bought back the shares from BarKo Group, ending the restaurant venture.