Mr. Walker: Frisch's was incorporated in 1947 and its stock has been publicly traded since 1960. We have reported positive earnings for all 40 of the years that we've been a public company. In November, we paid our 160th consecutive quarterly dividend. The family of our founder, Dave Frisch, had been in the restaurant business in Cincinnati for decades. While traveling in California, Dave was introduced to Bob's Big Boy restaurants. He thought that this was a great concept, and secured the franchise rights for Ohio, Kentucky, Indiana and Florida. He added the Big Boy sandwich to his menu at that point, and the restaurants took off, as did the entire Big Boy system. In the early days, Frisch's Big Boys were mostly drive-in restaurants, before the rise of fast food restaurants. In the '70s and '80s Frisch's changed from drive-ins to drive-thrus. Today our restaurants are a hybrid, somewhere between fast food and casual dining. We started out with drive-ins and have evolved to sit-down family dining with a drive-thru. We have 88 Big Boy's that we own and operate, and we franchise another 38. Our stores are located in Ohio, Kentucky and Indiana.
TWST: Who are you competing with?
Mr. Walker: The most direct competition would be concepts such as Bob
Evans, Cracker Barrel, Perkins, and all the other operators in the
family restaurant segment. From another point of view, we compete with
anybody who serves a meal.
Tickers included in this excerpt: FRS
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