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Marriott International has traditionally paid homage to its roots by hanging a portrait of namesakes J.W. “Willard” Marriott and son Bill in every hotel opened under the family’s name. But a third founder has been missing from the tribute, an apparent victim of her times. Without the daily involvement of Alice “Allie” Marriott, Willard’s wife and Bill’s mom, there might never have been the hospitality behemoth every traveler knows today.
Hers was not the same old story of the rock-solid spouse bucking up her man as he navigated withering adversity enroute to success. Regardless of whatever title she may have actually been given in the enterprise, it should have read “Co-founder & Equal Business Partner.” She was the force that kept the business from derailing financially as it morphed from a nine-stool A&W stand into a conglomerate with restaurants, concessions, contracts to supply airlines with inflight meals, and multiple lodging chains.
By all accounts from those days in the 1920s and ‘30s, Allie was a much-needed and even more appreciated complement to Willard.
“My father was a perfectionist,” the couple’s second son, Dick Marriott, told Restaurant Business in 2019. “He had a set of service standards covering everything, from your fingernail being clean to how to brush your teeth.”
Allie was “the velvet glove over the iron fists,” Marriott continued. “I never heard her raise her voice. Everyone who met her loved her.”
That warm disposition came despite shouldering some of the least glamorous jobs in the couple’s venture.
Willard was the charismatic outside man, always meticulously dressed and embodying the age’s definition of a gentleman. Allie sweated at the stove, preparing the tamales, chili, and other Tex-Mex foods the Marriotts featured at their A&W stand in Washington, D.C.
The franchise’s specialty was of course root beer, exclusively available at the time from an A&W outlet. It sold for a nickel a glass. Dick Marriott recalls his mother coming home with bags of nickels that were sticky from the sugar and syrup used to brew the beverage onsite. The coins had to be washed before Allie would lug them to the bank.
The Tex-Mex menu was inspired by what the Marriotts had eaten in their native Utah. They had relocated to Washington days after Allie graduated from college and the pair were married. A brilliant student, she earned her degree at age 19.
The A&W stand was a hit during Washington’s steamy summer. But the appeal of an ice-cold mug sagged as fall and winter rolled around.
Most A&Ws at the time would shut down for the colder portions of the year. Allie is credited with hitting on a way to keep the Marriott’s unit buzzing yearlong. She came up with the idea of adding hot food.
The couple decided to play up that point of differentiation. They renamed their enterprise The Hot Shoppe.
It gave rise to a chain of what would be categorized today as family dining restaurants. Hot Shoppes would eventually morph into the Big Boy chain, which in turn became one of the industry’s largest restaurant brands. Allie was integrally involved in every step.
It was she who eased the family-run business into a number of related fields. The Marriotts noticed that many customers of the Hot Shoppe near what’s now Reagan International Airport would pop in for a boxed meal enroute to the airport and their flights. Allie figured out a way to prepare meals in bulk so airlines could offer food as an inflight amenity. It was the birth of airline catering.
The business would grow into a huge component of the family’s foodservice empire.
In his autobiography, Willard Marriott credited his son, Bill, with being the catalyst for the family’s entry into the hotel business. The elder Marriott had misgivings about the diversification, or at least the debt that was needed to construct the initial property. Allie plunged into the venture, inserting herself into the interior design of that first Marriott hotel. Her work on that property helped to define the look and feel of the many Marriotts that would follow.
Despite her deep involvement in the family business, Allie found time to be active within Washington’s political and philanthropic circles. A lifelong Republican, she was named vice chairman of President Nixon’s inaugural committee in 1969 and served on the Republican National Committee.
Education was a major area of interest for the University of Utah grad. As the Marriott’s business took off, Allie and Willard formed the J. Willard and Alice S. Marriott Foundation. It would channel millions of dollars into initiatives aimed at promoting education.
Among the beneficiaries was Allie’s alma mater, which now sports the J. Willard Marriott Library and the Alice Sheets Marriott Center for Dance.
The corporation co-founded by Allie paid tribute to its matriarch in the 1980s by naming a major business initiative after her. Marriott attempted to form a new restaurant chain by acquiring the several hundred units of Howard Johnson’s that remained in business and converting them to a new buffet format. Other, smaller family dining chains would be similarly recast. New units would be developed as the all-day restaurants within Marriott hotels.
The name planned for the new chain: Allie’s.
Unfortunately, the venture never got off the ground.
Allie Marriott died in 2002 at the age of 92. Willard had passed in 1985, at age 85.
By that time, their sons had taken control of the Marriott hospitality empire.
Allie’s grandson, David Marriott, serves today as chairman of Marriott International.