Frisch's
Frisch's Big Boy is a regional Big Boy restaurant chain with headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia. For many years a Big Boy franchisee, in 2001, Frisch's became the exclusive owner of the Big Boy trademark in Indiana, Kentucky, and most of Ohio and Tennessee, and unaffiliated with Big Boy Restaurant Group. As of March 2025, the company claims to operate 31 locations in Indiana, Kentucky, and Ohio. This includes or included multiple Big Boy stores in and around Cincinnati OH, Dayton OH, Columbus OH, Toledo OH, Lexington KY, and Louisville KY. The corporate entities that currently own Frisch's are FBB IP LLC, FRM Management LLC, FRM Operations LLC, and FRM Holding Company LLC, all were formerly known as Frisch’s Restaurants Inc.
Frisch's is the oldest, longest surviving, and smallest regional Big Boy operator, excluding Bob's Big Boy in California, which was the original Big Boy restaurant and franchiser. The last new Frisch's opened in the Northern Kentucky International Airport in 2023. In 2015, Frisch's entered a sale and leaseback agreement of company owned locations. When Frisch's was unable to make full lease payments in 2024, the company was evicted from most stores. Leadership of Frisch's passed from founder David Frisch to his son-in-law and finally his grandson, until 2015, when the company was sold to Atlanta-based NRD Capital, an equity fund which focuses on restaurant development. Frisch's also previously owned numerous Golden Corral restaurants in Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia but after closing six under-performing stores in 2011, Frisch's sold the remainder in March 2012. In November 2024, after a series of evictions that led to closures of dozens of locations, a group of senior managers purchased all non-franchised remaining locations and company branding rights.
Operations
Frisch's Big Boy hamburger
The Big Boy served at Frisch's is slightly different from those at other Big Boy restaurants. Where Bob Wian dressed Big Boy hamburgers with mayonnaise and red relish, Frisch later replaced these with tartar sauce and added dill pickles in his version and applied these in a different order. Frisch's licensee Manners Big Boy used a different tartar sauce called "white sauce" and placed the pickles above the top patty. The use of tartar sauce on Frisch's Big Boy hamburgers was not simply a matter of taste. Frisch recognized the use of a single combined condiment was simpler and faster. Later the Big Boy system adopted the idea, using the combined form of red relish and mayonnaise, commonly known as thousand island dressing, on Big Boy hamburgers.Commercials and slogans
In earlier years, Frisch's adaptation of the Big Boy caricature was slimmer, had blond hair topped with a cook's cap, cartoon-like eyes, slightly cherubic facial features, and wore striped pants instead of the traditional checkered bib overall-type pants used by Bob's Big Boy. In the late 1960s both characters were redrawn incorporating common elements such as checkered pants and brown hair. This Frisch's Big Boy graphic was drawn with the pompadour and lost the cook's cap but otherwise the facial features remain the same as in the 1950s. This allowed Frisch's existing fiberglass statues to continue in use, with hair and overalls repainted. It is the typical statue displayed at Frisch's today, though several units use the West Coast Bob's Big Boy statue. In 2016 and 2017 a new design and statue were introduced.Through the 1970s, Frisch's personalized the Big Boy slogan, "Frisch's Has So Much More" similarly adapting it for the Frisch's owned, Kip's Big Boy restaurant chain in Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas.
In the mid-1980s, Marriott planned to retire the Big Boy character. As a publicity scheme, Marriott launched a "Should Big Boy Stay or Go?" campaign, asking customers at Frisch's and other Big Boy franchises to vote on whether or not the Big Boy should continue to be used for the trademark. Customers overwhelmingly voted that Big Boy should stay.
Slogan's used by Frisch's included, but were not limited to:
A classic Frisch's jingle used on both Radio & TV in the 1960s went:
Cincinnati Reds
For several decades, Frisch's has had a business relationship with the Cincinnati Reds baseball organization. From 1983 to 1998, Frisch's was a part owner of the ball club as a silent partner to majority owner Marge Schott, including during the team's World Series win in 1990.Two Frisch's Big Boy concession stands opened in 2013 at Cincinnati's Great American Ball Park. An East Coast Big Boy statue repainted with a Cincinnati Reds uniform was placed near one stand, and in March 2017, the first of the [|redesigned Frisch's statues], likewise in Reds uniform, was added.
Early history
Before Big Boy
In 1905, Samuel Frisch opened the Frisch Cafe in Cincinnati, Ohio. Five years later he closed the café and moved to the Norwood suburb of Cincinnati soon opening another café there. Success brought a new building in 1915 for the restaurant then known as Frisch's Stag Lunch. When the elder Frisch died in 1923, three of his sons, David, Reuben and Irving, continued operating the cafe; twenty-year-old Dave took his father's lead role.In 1932, Dave Frisch sold his interest in Stag Lunch and opened his own Frisch's Café. Frisch's Café was a success and in 1938 a second location opened, this one across from the Stag Lunch in Norwood. However, Frisch could not meet expenses of the Norwood restaurant and, facing bankruptcy, both cafés closed in 1938. Fred Cornuelle, a local businessman counseled Frisch and provided money for a new restaurant. In 1939 the Mainliner opened on Wooster Pike in Fairfax, Ohio. Cincinnati's first year-round drive-in restaurant, it was named after a passenger airplane that flew into nearby Lunken Airport. By 1944 a second Frisch's restaurant opened, designed to resemble George Washington's Mount Vernon home.
Becoming a Big Boy franchise
Immediately after World War II, Dave Frisch visited one of Bob Wian's Big Boy restaurants in California. Although he was unable to meet Wian, Frisch was impressed with the double-deck Big Boy hamburger and recognized the efficiency of two thinner beef patties cooking faster than a single thicker patty.Unknown to Dave Frisch, Bob Wian was disturbed by drive-in operators outside California using the Big Boy name and hamburger without permission. To maintain national trademark protection, Wian needed his Big Boy restaurants to operate in other regions of the U.S. When the two men later met, Wian offered Frisch a sweetheart deal of $1 per year for a four-state territory. The territory included the Cincinnati tri-state region of Ohio, Kentucky and Indiana and added Florida to increase Big Boy's national span. Frisch accepted and became the first Big Boy franchisee.
Being the first franchisee, an ad hoc arrangement allowed Dave Frisch unique freedoms. [|His double-deck Big Boy hamburger] was slightly different from Wian's. Dave Frisch also created his own Big Boy character: a thinner boy with reddish or blond hair, wearing striped rather than checkered overalls, presented in a running or skipping pose. Known as the East Coast Big Boy, this mark represented Frisch's and its licensees Manners and Azar's through 1969. Most Frisch's Big Boy restaurants still display statues from this design, albeit usually repainted with brown hair and checkered overalls. In 2017 a [|redesigned statue] resembling the West Coast Big Boy was introduced.
Dave Frisch began selling Big Boy hamburgers in 1946 at Frisch's Mainliner Drive-In. After forging a licensing agreement with Bob Wian in 1947, the first Frisch's Big Boy Drive-In restaurant, Big Boy One, opened on Central Parkway north of downtown Cincinnati.
Expansion and peak (1949-1991)
David Frisch opened three more Big Boy Drive–In Restaurants in 1949 – including the first in Kentucky – and opened his fifth drive–in the following year. By 1954 Frisch's operated 20 units in Greater Cincinnati and was subfranchising Big Boys elsewhere. In 1953 and 1954 Frisch's subfranchised Azar's Big Boy in Ft. Wayne, Indiana, and Manners Big Boy in the Cleveland, Ohio TV market. In 1955, Frisch's subfranchised northwest Ohio to Toledo brothers Milton and David Bennett, to operate under the Frisch's Big Boy name. By the fall of 1961 upwards of 150 drive–ins were in service by Frisch's and its franchisees.Louisville Operations
Around 1956, Frisch's opened 2 locations in Louisville. None of these locations remain today. One was close to the Dixie Drive In, the other in Saint Matthews. The next year, they opened one near Rubbertown, and in 1958, one opened near Jeffersontown.All locations were franchised according to Karen Maier and the 1st edition of "Places you Remember". She states: "During the 50's, 60's, even the 70's, Frisch's Big Boys in the Louisville market were franchised. There were several
different owners whose names I remember - Bob Stark and Bob Arns, Stanley Barron, and a German fellow named Garrick
or Garrett, but for the life of me, I can't remember his last name. I know there was one other franchisee, but I can't recall
that name either.
Our first Big Boy restaurant located at 4800 Shelbyville Road opened on October 26, 1976. That building was replaced
with a newer building on April 16th, 1987". However, the St Matthews location still likely opened in 1956 rather than 1976.
In 1960, 1966 and 1969 Frisch's licensed three Elby's Big Boys in the upper Ohio Valley area of Ohio. After the death of Dave Frisch, a fourth Ohio Elby's Big Boy prepared to open in 1971, but Frisch's unexpectedly demanded much higher fees for the unit. In response, Elby's cancelled all ties to Frisch's and operated independently of Big Boy in Ohio, including in direct competition to Frisch's in the Columbus market. Protracted litigation followed as Frisch's sued Elby's and eventually Shoney's for operating non-Big Boy restaurants in Frisch's Big Boy territory, while operating Big Boys in neighboring states. Overall, the lawsuits were unsuccessful and both Elby's and Shoney's dropped Big Boy affiliation completely in 1984.
Frisch's began to distribute its branded tartar sauce to local grocery stores in 1960. Silverton, Ohio-based Food Specialties Co has made the tartar sauce for Frisch's since 1946, under a "handshake agreement" between the manufacturer's grandfather and Frisch's founder David Frisch. The Food Specialties company is the sole owner of the tartar sauce's secret recipe, although not the branded Frisch's name.
Frisch's faced competition from numerous restaurants, both national and local. The Cincinnati McDonald's restaurants introduced the Filet-O-Fish in 1963 in an aggressive campaign against Frisch's.
David Frisch died in 1970, and his son-in law, Jack C. Maier was elected president and chairman of the board. When Maier retired in 1989, his son Craig F. Maier became president and CEO.
In 1972, Frisch's purchased Kip's Big Boy which covered Texas, Oklahoma and areas of Kansas. In 1988, in exchange for allowing Elias Brothers to operate Big Boys in Ohio, Frisch's received Big Boy rights in parts of Tennessee and Georgia.
In 1983, Frisch's introduced drive-thru service at many restaurants, although carhops were retained at a few Cincinnati locations. It added the soup and salad bar as well, as well as many other Big Boy chains.
Frisch's ended Kip's operations in 1991.