Celebration July 24 Marks Arby's 50th Anniversary
YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio -- The Mahoning Valley Historical Society will host a reunion July 24 of the corporate employees who worked for Arby’s from 1964 to 1976 to observe the 50th anniversary of the fast-food chain founded here.
Arby's Restaurant Group Inc., which today has more than 3,600 restaurants in the United States, Canada, Turkey, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, is sponsoring the reunion.
The founders, Forrest and LeRoy Raffle, grew up in New Castle, Pa. After college, the brothers purchased a restaurant equipment company here and renamed it Raffel Brothers Inc. In the early 1960s, they decided that their future lay in starting their own fast-food chain.
Their menu focused on freshly cut roast beef sandwiches served with barbeque or horseradish sauce. The sandwiches cost 69 cents -- more than three times the price of a McDonald’s hamburger -- but the brothers were confident that the quality of their sandwiches would attract customers and bring them back.
They were right and in 1976 the Raffels sold the Arby’s chain to Royal Crown Cola. Two years later, there were 800 Arby’s restaurants with annual sales exceeding $350 million throughout the United States.
The reunion will conclude at 7 p.m. with a panel discussion open to the public moderated by Bill Lawson, executive director of the history society, the panel consisting of Leroy Raffel, historian Thomas Welsh, who wrote Classic Restaurants of Youngstown, and Donna DeBlasio, a professor of history at Youngstown State University.
Besides recounting the history of Arby’s, the panelists will discuss the national fast-food industry and the culture of innovation and entrepreneuership in the Mahoning Valley.
The public is invited to the free panel discussion in the Tyler Mahoning Valley History Center.
For more information, call 330 743 2589.
Published by The Business Journal, Youngstown, Ohio.
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