Johnnie’s adds a No. 50
This month, family-owned restaurant specializing in family dining will celebrate its 50th anniversary
What’s the secret to keeping a family-owned restaurant specializing in family dining relevant in a competitive market for five decades?
Expand and diversify the business and the family. When Johnnie Haynes opened the first charcoal broiler bearing his name 50 years ago, he couldn’t have done it without family. Two decades after his passing, Johnnie’s turns 50 thanks to his sons David and Rick. But he left them with one important lesson that’s been the secret sauce to sustainability.
“Respect my employees,” David Haynes said. “Show them respect. ... We get involved in our employees’ lives, and dad taught me how to do that.”
The advice helped Johnnie’s survive drive-thru windows, explosive industry growth, and the everevolving demands of the hamburger-consuming masses. At 50, Johnnie’s boasts seven locations, including two with bars, and advances Johnnie Haynes never would’ve thought possible.
“My dad was a great man to work with, he was my best friend,” Rick Haynes said. “But the biggest lesson I learned from my father was how to treat the people that work for us.”
In the beginning
Johnnie’s Charcoal Broiler replaced a Potter’s Drive-in at the corner of W Britton Road and Military Avenue on Sept. 4, 1971. A Taco Mayo stands there today.
It was the first restaurant for Haynes, but he had 18 years experience running the legendary Split-T Drivein on Western.
“My dad was never a dishwasher there,” Rick Haynes laughed. “I have no doubt he washed dishes during his time there, but he wasn’t hired as a dishwasher. Every time there’s a story about the Split-T, they say he was hired as a dishwasher, but he was an experienced restaurant operator when he was hired.”
As Split-T owner Vince Stephens and his family, which owned the iconic Dolores Restaurant, expanded their interests into Texas and California, Johnnie felt the time was right to go into business for himself and his growing family.
Despite the reputation Haynes built just a few miles south at The Split-T, folks in the Britton corridor were slow to warm to Johnnie’s.
“The first day was a little slow,” David Haynes said. “But it got a little busier every day until pretty soon we were busy all the time.”
Along with their mother Pauline, the Haynes boys joined their dad six days a week whether in the summertime or in the middle of the school year.
“I’ve never had another job,” Rick Haynes said. “I car-hopped and made what I thought at the time was a lot of money. A seventh-grader making 5 to 15 bucks a night was pretty good.”
Work ethic was the first lesson the Haynes brothers were taught.
“He was that way with me at the Split-T,” David Haynes said. “Everybody could be standing around, but he’d have something for me to do because he never wanted anyone to ever say that his kids got special treatment.”
Johnnie Haynes died in 2000 at the age of 71. At the time, Johnnie’s had grown to four locations with more than 700 seats for dining. The Johnnie’s family had also added three prominent members, who have combined for close to 125 years of service.
A growing family
Doug Cunningham was a seventh-grader with 11
months experience at the local A&W Root Beer when classmate and buddy Rick Haynes mentioned he might want to drop the root beer stand and join the crew at Johnnie’s.
Cunningham reckoned it might be fun to work with friends, so in 1973 he said yes and hasn’t left yet.
When the first Johnnie’s moved down Britton Road in 1977, Cunningham was there. Same when they expanded to Edmond in 1981, south Oklahoma City in 1983 and all those that followed. He’s worked virtually every job Johnnie’s has to offer, but today 48 years after he started, Cunningham is general manager of the Edmond store.
“It’s just been a growing experience, you know it was just gonna get me through high school, then it was gonna just get me through college,” Cunningham said. “I’ve had two new homes, I’ve had quite a few new cars, and put two kids through college.”
About a year after the original Edmond location opened in 1981, Janet Estes had a sister working there.
“I think Rick called her and said ‘Hey, do you have a sister and does she need a job?’ and I went to work with her that night and never left.”
In her 39th year at Johnnie’s, Estes now is director of operations.
“You don’t even think of it as that when you’re working in it,” Estes said. “You work in it day in, day out and it’s OK. It becomes part of who you are, and so you don’t think about it being some astronomical big thing.”
She said loyalty and a family environment have made it easy to stay at Johnnie’s, but ultimately “it’s a great product.”
Estes said in 39 years at Johnnie’s, guests have evolved most thanks to COVID-19.
“Guests today are different than they were two years ago, and I’d say probably for the better,” she said. “They’re more understanding and more gracious and more appreciative of the workers and other customers.”
Not long after Estes arrived in Edmond, Jack Bobbitt took a job at the south store.
“In December, it’ll be 37 years,” Bobbitt said.
Bobbitt was attending Southeast High School when he first bussed tables for Johnnie’s. Three months later, he was washing dishes until graduation then started cooking full-time while going part-time to college.
Then one day he got an offer only a love of facial hair could cause him to refuse.
“Rick told me if I was serious about becoming a manager I might want to shave off the beard,” Bobbitt said. “So, the next day I shaved.”
Bobbitt said there’s a difference between managing people and being their boss, and he learned it at Johnnie’s.
“I’ve had several great mentors over the years, but Rick and David and Janet poured into me and taught me how to manage people.”
Cunningham said he’s watched Edmond and its families blossom and mature.
“I’m feeding my customers’ grandkids nowadays, and I’m so thankful for the opportunity.”
All grown up?
Burgers are still numbered the same way since Johnnie’s opened, but change hasn’t completely been shunned. Only the oldest of the seven Johnnie’s locations doesn’t have a drive-thru window today, and orders can be made from an app.
Two locations now have adjacent bars. The Yukon store opened The Sports Bar last year, and the summer before COVID-19 arrived, the former Giovanni’s Gelato next door to the No. 1 store became a full-service bar with a patio called The Lounge.
Johnnie’s offers veggie and Impossible patties today. Entrees and salads helped bolster the menu over the years. They even started melting the legendary hand-grated cheese on request.
If Johnnie haunts the extended family about anything, it’s this. But even his ghost would have to appreciate changes made to benefit the bottom line and be pleased folks lined up at Johnnie’s long enough to be considered family.
Family bound by Hik’ry Sauce, which everyone knows runs thicker than blood.