Jack's facts for kids
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Trade name
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Jack's |
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| Private | |
| Industry | Restaurant |
| Genre | Fast food |
| Predecessor | Jack's' Hamburgers |
| Founded | Jack's' Hamburgers: November 21, 1960 Homewood, Alabama Jack's: 1975 Birmingham, Alabama |
| Founder | Jack Caddell |
| Headquarters |
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U.S.
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Number of locations
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258 as of June 28, 2024[update] |
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Area served
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Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee, and Mississippi |
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Key people
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| Products | Hamburgers • Fried chicken • French fries • Soft drinks • Breakfast |
| Revenue |  US$940 million (FY 2021) US$500 million (FY 2020) |
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Number of employees
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7,200 as of 2023[update] |
Jack's is a popular American fast food restaurant chain. It started in Alabama and is known for its tasty burgers, fried chicken, and breakfast items. You can eat inside, pick up your food at the drive-thru, or order it to go. As of June 2023, there were 238 Jack's restaurants. The company is still growing, opening about 20 new locations each year. Jack's main office is in Birmingham, Alabama.
Contents
History of Jack's Restaurants
Jack's was started on November 21, 1960, by a person named Jack Caddell. It began as a small walk-up stand in Homewood, Alabama. This first location is still open today and has been updated several times. It is now the main store for the whole chain.
When Jack's first opened, you could buy a hamburger for 15 cents. Fries were also 15 cents, and shakes cost 20 cents. By the mid-1960s, Jack's had grown to more than six locations around Birmingham. They also had stores in other states like Mississippi and South Carolina.
In the late 1970s, Jack's started to expand into southern Alabama and Florida. However, many of these new stores closed in the 1980s. But one person, Benny LaRussa, found success with Jack's. He bought one Jack's restaurant in the 1960s. In 1979, he bought 13 more Jack's stores. By 1988, he owned 33 stores. Later that year, LaRussa bought the rights to the entire Jack's company.
In 2015, a company called Onex Corporation bought Jack's. Onex is a private equity company from Canada. Then, in July 2019, Onex announced they were selling Jack's again. The deal was completed in August 2019. It was reported that AEA Investors, a company from New York, bought the restaurant chain.
What's on the Jack's Menu?
Jack's is especially famous for its breakfast. They have many kinds of biscuit sandwiches, like smoked sausage, country ham, egg, cheese, bacon, and sausage. You can also get pancake breakfasts, wraps, and sides like hashbrowns and grits.
For lunch and dinner, a popular item is the Big Jack. This is a double cheeseburger that many people really love. You can get sides like French fries, coleslaw, green beans, and mashed potatoes. Their biscuits are also very famous.
Jack's also offers boneless chicken tenders with different dipping sauces. They have bone-in fried chicken plates, and both fried and grilled chicken sandwiches. If you like salads, they have those too, and you can add grilled or fried chicken. For dessert, try their fried pies, hand-spun milkshakes, or ice cream. Sometimes, they also have special limited-time items, like lemonade shakes.
How Jack's Restaurants Looked Over Time
When Jack's first started, the restaurants were simple walk-up stands. They had slanted roofs and orange and yellow stripes on the sides. In the late 1960s, Jack's began changing these stands into full restaurants where people could sit inside. Many of these updated restaurants had walls that looked like stone.
The original signs for Jack's were tall and had the word "Jack's" in white boxes at the top. Below that, another sign said "Hamburgers." There was also a small round sign showing the price of hamburgers, which was "15¢." Other signs showed prices for fries and shakes, and one said "Self-Service."
In the mid-1970s, Jack's started using new signs. The name was written at an angle in white inside a red circle. The word "Hamburgers" was no longer on the sign. In the early 2000s, Jack's changed its logo again. The letters were no longer all capital. The new logo still used the red circle, but the text was bigger and went outside the circle.
See also
- Milo's Hamburgers, another Alabama-based burger restaurant similar to Jack's
- List of hamburger restaurants
