Few celebrities become deeply involved in the restaurants that bear their names. That was true of the singer Pat Boone, who was known to visit his namesake restaurants occasionally and to sing and sign autographs at openings. How much good his – or any celebrity’s – connection does for a restaurant is debatable. Neither Pat Boone’s success as a performer nor his pro-family, clean-cut, Christian image saved the ventures he lent his name and money to.
Pat Boone’s Dine-O-Mat appears to have barely gotten off the ground despite what publicity referred to as its “space age” design. “This . . . new type of fully automatic roadside restaurant is destined to be an important landmark on highways all over America,” boasted a 1963 advertisement aimed at investors. The initial plan was to build 100 of the restaurants by summer of 1964, but few seem to have been constructed.
An earlier disappointing experiment in restauranting, Pat Boone’s Country Inn, in Denton TX, closed a mere four years after opening in 1958, even though Boone was connected to the town because of attending North Texas State College there.
While the Country Inn was a conventional restaurant, Dine-O-Mats were designed to be “revolutionary.” Perhaps the New Jersey entrepreneurs who cooked up the Dine-O-Mat concept were inspired by Stouffer’s 1961 foray into selling frozen food from vending machines to Ohio turnpike motorists who reheated it in microwave ovens.
Little could Pat Boone and company know when they launched Dine-O-Mats in 1962 that Stouffer’s would announce less than a year later their intention to phase out the roadside restaurants after realizing that travelers only wanted “speed and price.”
Both Stouffer’s highway restaurants and Dine-O-Mats might be called automats. But unlike Horn & Hardart automats, coins put in a slot did not call forth ready-to-eat selections. Dine-O-Mats had only one employee on the premises, an attendant whose job was to keep the machines loaded with frozen food. Rather comically, the postcard above shows customers (and Pat) dressed in their Sunday best, yet they are “dining” in a dismal geodesic-domed hut surrounded by vending machines and two microwaves sunk into an imitation hearth.
Similar to Stouffer’s restaurants, Dine-O-Mats were to be located near “motels, service stations, shopping centers, bowling alleys, country clubs, amusement parks, factories, air and bus terminals and along major highways,” according to a 1962 prospectus. How many were ever built, other than the prototype on Route 46 in Little Ferry NJ, is unclear. There may have been a few additional ones in New Jersey and Georgia.
Since kitchenless Dine-O-Mats relied on cooked food supplied by an offsite commissary, the scheme made sense only if deliveries could reach multiple outlets easily. In 1964 construction was to begin on a unit in Augusta, Georgia, but the project was delayed because of company “reorganization.” It was to be part of a group of Dine-O-Mats in Albany, Macon, and Savannah, but whether any of the Georgia restaurants opened I cannot determine.
In 1965, when the Augusta construction was slated to begin, a newspaper report announced, “The Pat Boone Restaurant Corp. has revised all plans and has just now completed reorganization with new, modernized plans for its restaurants.” Though it’s hard to imagine what could be more modern than “space age,” it’s possible the geodesic dome had been scrapped and that the North Plainfield NJ Dunkin Donuts pictured here was once a Dine-O-Mat as some people believe.
The company’s confusing advertisements for prospective investors required differing minimum investment amounts ranging from $2,500 to $10,000 for a “limited (inactive) partnership” in April of 1963, to $15,000 to become an “area controller” in October, then asking $10,000 for an “investment opportunity” in March of 1965. Did anyone ever get the 10% to 13% returns that were estimated?
© Jan Whitaker, 2013
It's great to hear from readers and I take time to answer queries. I can't always find what you are looking for, but I do appreciate getting thank yous no matter what the outcome.
Restaurant-ing through history 
Remember eating in Pat Boone’s in Little Ferry, N J. I was high school student at time and we used to “cruise” to hang outs. If I remember it reminded me of Horn and Hardarts. Kind of different for the suburbs. Can’t forget the crazy small building it was. Got drafted, came home and it was gone.
My father was one of the “victims.”. He lost everything. ….I can barely say Pat Boone without feeling queasy.
Ate at Country Inn in Denton in 1963. A very clear memory as it was the evening JFK got assassinated. So it was open a little more than 4 years.
I had the only other Pat Boone’s restaurant, it was located in Green Brook NJ. Soon after I opened the group working with Boone declared bankruptcy. I had to buy out the lease in their name to stay open. Managed to keep the business going as a steak house for seven years before selling. Boone did pull up in his chauffeured limo, he did not sing but spent the time recounting his problems. I was lucky, there were a number of investors who lost life savings without ever opening a business.
Thanks for sharing. I think there’s a popular idea that franchised restaurants are less risky than independents but that’s often not true at all.
from Bob Roe: My brother and I worked at your restaurant as teenagers. Looking back, thank you for giving us good work experience.
Don’t remember if waiters wore white shoes at Pat Boone’s Country Inn in Denton, Texas. I do remember the grand opening. We married that weekend and went to the opening to eat lunch with out of town guests. The sugar was in the salt shaker and salt in sugar bowls. The opening experience was long and mixed up. Later I think it improved.
The restaurant in Denton was where we would go on Mothers Day. My outing for the year with screaming babies.
Is this a former location in Nashville? On Charlotte Ave, now a bank? http://www.flickr.com/photos/army_arch/4486308443/
Intriguing thought, though I doubt it since the bank’s roof looks less flattened, more three-dimensional. I suspect the postcard is only a drawing and may never have been built.
This story justifiably underscores the reason I, and many entertainers like me, got out of the restaurant biz, and many like businesses. We can’t run the businesses ourselves, so we put our confidence in others who convince us they know how, and will do responsible, profitable jobs. Then they don’t..and leave us with a public embarrassment and sometimes legal complaints from injured investors. I lent my name several times to good concepts, even forerunners of others’ successes…but was hurt by the incompetence and even dishonesty of my new “partners”. Very costly.
Yes, I’ve run across many such stories and plan to write about more of them in the future. Thanks for your comment!
Thank you, mr. boone.
Doesn’t have the nostalgic pull of Horn&Hardart’s, does it?!
I wonder if the waiters wore white shoes.