If you think “Applebee’s Neighborhood Grill and Bar” is a mouthful, just wait until you hear what the restaurant was originally called.
Applebee’s Neighborhood Grill and Bar (or Applebee’s for short) grew out of a single restaurant founded by Bill and T.J. Palmer in Decatur, Georgia, more than four decades ago. Bill Palmer had worked in the restaurant business for years by that point, but the Decatur restaurant marked the first time the Palmers struck out on their own, per a 1983 article in the then-Atlanta Journal.
Their idea was to open up a neighborhood haunt where patrons could enjoy dinner and drinks at reasonable prices. But the name they chose sounded a bit more like a place where you might buy cough medicine, or even a few packs of berry-flavored THC gummies.
That very first restaurant — T.J. Applebee’s Rx for Edibles & Elixirs, as it was known — officially opened its doors in November 1980, according to the company.
This tongue-twister of a name, however, wasn’t the first choice. Bill Palmer had originally wanted the restaurant to go by “Appleby” or “Appleby’s,” but that name, as well as two other contenders (“Cinnamon’s” and “Peppers”), were already registered, the Chicago Tribune once reported.
The Palmers ultimately tweaked the spelling of “Appleby” and added a few other flourishes to differentiate their name and get it approved.
It’s unclear why the Palmers settled on “Appleby” or “Applebee’s” to begin with, but legend has it that they and another early co-founder picked it out of a phone book, according to Business Insider and Mashed, citing an archived statement from T.J. Palmer.
T. J. Palmer also claims to have added “Edibles and Elixirs” so as to differentiate from “the same ole grill and bar adjectives” at other establishments, according to an account that appears to have been written by T.J. Palmer herself. To go with the name, she even suggested placing barber poles and the wooden likeness of a Native American out front, like those sometimes seen outside of drugstores or tobacconists, she said.
Just a few years later, though, the Palmers sold Applebee’s, and the new owners eventually changed the name to “Applebee’s Neighborhood Grill and Bar.” (The “T.J.” portion appears to have persisted at some of the earlier restaurants, which are referred to as “T.J. Applebee’s” in many newspaper accounts.)
A few other ideas were nixed over the years, too: The early restaurants had greenhouse-style roofing over parts of the dining area, and their bars stayed open well into the early hours of the morning on Fridays and Saturdays, according to the 1983 Journal article. Early menus also offered oysters or cottage cheese alongside more common pub staples.
But as the owners (and the times) changed, so too did Applebee’s. Innovations even continue to this day, with Applebee’s recently preparing to open the first of many shared U.S. locations with IHOP in the coming years.
“It’s been a lot of pain and lot of fun along the way,” Bill Palmer, who became a franchisee after selling the company in 1983, told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution in 2010 of the company’s evolution. “[Applebee’s] is kind of like an Army brat — it was born here in Atlanta, but it was raised throughout the world. It’s become a pretty incredible adventure.”
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