BANGOR, Maine — After paying her last tab at the Bangor Howard Johnson Restaurant, Carole Saulnier walked up to Jamie St. Amand, her regular waitress, and wrapped her up in a hug.
“I’ll miss you guys,” St. Amand said, fighting back tears.
The restaurant closed its doors Tuesday after 50 years in business, though the attached Howard Johnson motel remains open.
Regulars like Saulnier spent the morning hugging their favorite waitresses. For about two decades, she and around a dozen friends who swim together at the Bangor Y made breakfast at the Howard Johnson part of their Sunday routine.
St. Amand knows most of their orders so well by now, she’s able to walk around their big table in the lounge area, pointing to each one in turn and asking “same ol’?” Saulnier joked that they had the lounge to themselves because the group tends to get “too loud and rowdy,” and would bother diners in the main restaurant area.
“You feel like you’re just a server, but they think of you as so much more,” St. Amand said of her regulars. She’s been a waitress at Howard Johnson since 2010, and is now looking for work elsewhere.
Saulnier and the other Sunday regulars swapped contact information with her after breakfast Tuesday so they could find out where she ends up and follow St. Amand to her next restaurant.
The shuttering of the Bangor restaurant leaves just one Howard Johnson left in the country, located in Lake George, New York. At one point in its history, the New England-based chain of eateries boasted more than 800 locations.
Opened in 1966, the Howard Johnson Restaurant and Lounge in Bangor harkens back to a bygone era when patrons would drop by for such familiar favorites as fried clam strips, frankfurters and all-you-can-eat fried fish.
It also was a meeting place for members of the Bangor Noontime Kiwanis Club, motorcycle groups and a group of retired veterans.
Word that the restaurant likely would close has been circulating in the community for more than a year.
Howard Johnson’s restaurants started in 1925 in Quincy, Massachusetts, with a soda fountain and an emphasis on quality foods. A decade later, there were 25 locations across Massachusetts.
In 1936, the first location beyond the borders of the Bay State opened in Milford, Connecticut. In the 1950s, the company expanded to offer motor lodges, as well — much like the one that opened in Bangor with the attached restaurant.
David Patel, who owns the restaurant and attached hotel with his wife, Sally, said the restaurant is available for lease, either under the Howard Johnson flag or a different brand, or for sale if someone wants to step forward to purchase that portion of the building.
They’ve owned the business for the past four years, and say that while the hotel has been successful, the restaurant kept losing money.
“We just couldn’t make it work anymore,” he said Wednesday.
Follow Nick McCrea on Twitter at @nmccrea213.
BDN writer Dawn Gagnon contributed to this report.