Years after its heyday in South Jersey and around the country, a new Roy Rogers restaurant opened to anxious crowds in Cherry Hill on June 25.
Lines wrapped around the front of the building and overflowed onto the right lane of Haddonfield Road, where fans eagerly awaited their burgers, fries and chicken tenders. The restaurant hosted a ribbon cutting at 10 a.m. and opened to the public half an hour later.
The ribbon cutting incuded remarks from company officials and a welcome from Mayor Dave Fleisher, along with an American flag raised by the JROTC during the singing of the national anthem. The Roy Rogers company then presented the township library a check for $500, a donation to the community it left in the 1990s, according to the company itself.
Hope Holroyd is the library’s public relations and marketing coordinator.
“They had contacted us a few months ago, saying that the opening was coming up,” she recounted. “They were starting to work on their advertising and marketing for it. And then, as part of the opening, they just wanted to provide a local donation and they reached out to us first.”
The library was the only local recipient of a donation from the fast-food chain, and members of its staff and the Friends of the Library organization attended the opening to accept the restaurant’s check. Also there were library leaders Tierney Miller, director; chief of operations Jennie Purcell; board of trustees member Kathy Judge; and Friends of the Library president Marlyn Kalitan.
The fast-food company’s ceremonial check featured a giant company logo and background drawings featuring the hat of Roy Rogers and a cactus. The chain was founded in 1968 and named for Rogers, a cowboy movie actor and singer.
“It was hot, but it was really fun to see everybody come out,” Holroyd noted of the restaurant opening. “The community was really excited, and that’s one thing we were excited to see, the amount of people who were just lined up and excited for the food and cheered us on for getting the donation.”
In addition to the monetary contribution, the company also gave the library prizes for its children’s summer reading program, including wooden tokens that can be exchanged for free ice cream with a purchase and achievement certificates acknowledging a child’s success in maintaining reading skills during the academic off-season.
“It was just a really nice welcome back to the town and everything,” Holroyd noted, “because they hadn’t had a restaurant in town for a really long time.”
