I wrote a few months ago about a Popeyes restaurant in Woodbridge, Virginia, which, hidden by the typical Popeyes facade, contained a red peaked roof. It turns out, this was a Gino’s restaurant, a fast food chain which sold burgers and also in many locations held a license to sell Kentucky Fried Chicken (before that company operated stores in those territories).
Just a few weeks ago, I featured an IHOP restaurant in North Plainfield, New Jersey, which I must have passed dozens of times in the years I lived in that state. It looked more or less like an IHOP, but with a regular peaked blue roof instead of that old A-frame look. It turns out, this IHOP also began life as a Gino’s—the original Gino’s building and roof were retained, as is, with the exception of the roof color, but an entire second half was added onto one side of the original building to make an interior large enough for a sit-down restaurant.
Realizing that there might be either curiously adapted or well hidden Gino’s roofs all over the place, I did some looking, and found a few more. They’re quite fun to identify, and the buildings must have been of quite high quality, because a large number of them are still standing.
I’ll start with another one I’m familiar with but had no idea about its history. It’s this building here, currently a Chipotle, in my hometown of Flemington, New Jersey:
Previously, for as long as I remember, it was a Boston Market. But take a look at that roof, which I suppose assumed was just part of the Boston Market look:
A 1983 newspaper edition tells us that in the previous year, the Flemington Gino’s was converted into a Roy Rogers, which it remained until its conversion to Boston Market.
A brief 1995 article mentions the hospitality group holding the Roy Rogers and later Boston Market franchises, along with a photo of the Flemington Boston Market. I take that to mean that it was converted in 1995 or the year before, and that while the franchise changed, the ownership did not.
In 2005, the building caught fire, and the building was identified in a newspaper article as “believed to be more than 30 years old.” (Was there no record of its construction date?)
On the Roy Rogers bit, a little tangential note: about a decade ago, a new Roy Rogers opened in Flemington, not far from the old one. It didn’t last very long, but apparently, the location was chosen to capitalize on nostalgia and memory that people in the company’s former territory might still have.1
I also found addresses for a couple of old Gino’s restaurants around the Trenton area, based on old newspaper ads. One of those addresses is today an ordinary Popeyes:
But from the back, you can see the central peaked roof in the middle!
Here it is in 1979, from NETR Historic Aerials imagery, in the signature red:
Earlier imagery shows that the building may possibly have been altered or even rebuilt, but there was a Gino’s here since at least 1963!
Here’s the other address today:
It is, or was, a pediatrician’s office; it appears to be vacant now. Before that, perhaps, it was an Italian or Greek restaurant, per the columns on the front awning. But once again, there’s that roof.
And from 1979!
This location dates back to at least 1966.
One more. Moving states, here is the (now closed) Car Wash Coffee, in Kensington, Maryland, near Silver Spring:
Contrary to the name, it was never a car wash. And contrary to the facade, it is not an old two-story urban structure. Once again:
I think we’ll do this again some time!
Related Reading:
I find this interesting because it’s a kind of institutional memory. I have another example: Wienerschnitzel, the hot dog chain from California, had a handful of little-known Virginia locations in the 1970s and 1980s, which I wrote about at some length here. It was the Hampton Roads region of the state where they survived for some years; an attempt at the D.C.-area market fizzled very quickly. Wienerschnitzel announced in 2025 what was described as its first east-coast deal (not quite correct), with stores planned for Richmond and Norfolk, the latter in the same region as the original locations many decades ago.