Howard Johnson was a mid-twentieth-century phenomenon, an American company that pioneered concepts of food service and hospitality still in use in the twenty-first century. Super-premium ice cream, restaurant franchises, turnpike service stops, commissary-based restaurant production, quality control, and customer service were concepts formulated by the founder, Howard Deering Johnson, beginning with one corner drugstore in the oceanside Wollaston section of Quincy, Massachusetts, south of Boston. In 1925, the twenty-seven-year-old businessman turned his newsstand into a thriving delivery service, then set his sights on improving the soda fountain. He developed the first super-premium commercial ice cream using natural flavoring and cream with twice the butterfat content. Depending on the source, the story goes that Johnson either improved on his mother’s recipe or purchased the formula from a pushcart operator. In any event, his new, larger portions were distinctively sculpted with a specially designed ice cream scoop.
