New restaurant...old friend

So I was finishing up for the day Wednesday and looked at a business card that I had been given earlier in the day while reporting on the new Bob's Big Boy in West Covina. There was a subtle but huge change I hadn't noticed earlier. The card said Big Boy. Not Bob's Big Boy.

Yikes! Like many, I grew up with Bob's Big Boy. Something called Big Boy is totally foreign to me, and I'm sure many others -- at least on the West Coast.

So I called up the West Covina restaurant's owner, Jim Louder, who cleared it up for me.

Bob's Big Boy is still used on the West Coast, but not necessarily in other parts of the country.

That got me into some interesting history.

As it turns out, Bob Wian, who founded the restaurant in 1936 in Glendale, allowed owners of the franchised restaurants to put their own names in front of the Big Boy, Louder said.

But according to Louder, there are many restaurants in the company that are, in name, a far cry from the "Bob's" us West-Coasters have come to know and love.

There's Azar's in Indiana (Azar's Big Boy? -- I don't know); Eat'n Park in Pittsburgh.

I'm sure they are all good. But nothing compares to the retro vibe of the Burbank Bob's -- the oldest in the chain.

A lot has changed for the Big Boy business since it's last restaurant left West Covina in 1994.

Back then, the chain was owned by Elias Brothers, which had bought it in 1987 from the Marriott Corp. That's right...the hotel owner. Mariott had owned it since 1967. But things didn't work out under Elias Brothers. The company declared bankruptcy in 2000, and ultimately the chain was sold to Robert Liggett Jr., who took over as CEO, and renamed the company Big Boy Restaurants International.

Still, the Bob's name remains on many franchised restaurants. And that's a very good thing, as the Big Boy chain is reborn in West Covina.