- Jack Omer and his husband acquired five Lee’s Original Chicken Recipe stores in eastern Indiana in separate transactions.
- Each restaurant is undergoing a remodel to current brand standards, with a goal to complete the projects by the end of the year.
Jack Omer insisted he’s not an emotional person.
Yet, when he talked about his acquisition of five Lee’s Famous Chicken Recipe locations in Indiana, he couldn’t help but get sentimental and even a bit nostalgic being able to carry on the family’s history with the brand. It was Harold Omer, his grandfather, who co-founded the quick-service chain with Lee Cummings, his great uncle, in 1966 in Lima, Ohio, when their lone restaurant was called Harold’s Take Home.
Today, Lee’s has more than 130 locations in about a dozen states, primarily in the Midwest, and Canada.
“It feels good and really satisfying to do this,” Jack Omer, 45, said about entering the Lee’s system as a first-time franchisee with his husband. “I have such great memories of visiting my grandfather in his office and working in my aunt’s restaurant in East Tennessee as a young boy on the busy holidays, like Mother’s Day and Fourth of July. I was never on the payroll back then because of my age, but I helped make the coleslaw by hand in these giant plastic sleeves, buttering the biscuits and working on the pack line. I have great memories of doing all that.”…