The Colonial Innkeepers

Most motel chains depend on an easily recognizable similarity to attract customers: Holiday Inns, for example, all have bright green neon signs, and Howard Johnson motor lodges feature the familiar orange roof. One chain has made a virtue of being different, though, and hardly has two establishments that are alike. It is Treadway Inns Corp., whose 28 hostels include such disparate stopovers as Nantucket's 120-year-old Jared Coffin House, once a whaler's mansion, a modern downtown motel in the Treadway headquarters town of Rochester, N.Y., and an Alpine chalet in Franconia, N.H., known as the Mittersill Inn. Most of Treadway's inns are in New England, but some are scattered as far away as Virginia and Texas; now Treadway is moving into the Midwest, plans to open seven units a year there from now on.

Extra Pillows. Nearly half of Treadway's inns are summer resorts that cater to what used to be known as "the steamer-trunk and rocking-chair fleet." But today's profit is in country inns and in motels that cater to transients and conventions, and Treadway is concentrating on these in its expansion. Despite the added costs of running a chain of inns in which neither the food, the decor nor the furniture are standardized, Treadway has set an enviable earnings record: on its $16 million in sales last year, it was among industry leaders in earnings per dollar invested.

However varied they may be, all Treadways have one thing in common: special touches for the guests. A Treadway Inn never has more than 200 rooms, and guests are pampered with decorator interiors, extra pillows, and lemon soap. Guests can also expect good New England cooking in the dining room (lobster pie, clam chowder, homemade bread, Indian pudding) and special celebrations on Valentine's Day, St. Patrick's Day, Mardi Gras, and the twelve days of Christmas, when several Treadways feature a boar's head, suckling pig and medieval carolers. Yet Treadway, where it counts, is very much up-to-date: the ten-story Treadway Inn at Niagara Falls (see MODERN LIVING) is an all-electric motel in which desk clerks manipulate individual room temperatures to suit guests as they check in.

"Start in the Kitchen." The extra touches began with Founder L. G. (for Lauris Goldsmith) Treadway, who worked his way through Dartmouth ('08) in the college kitchen, became so fascinated with cooking that he abandoned law. Treadway first worked for a series of New England inns, then opened the first Treadway in 1912 at Williams College, where he persuaded college officials to let him run the alumni house as a public establishment. The inn is still operated by Treadway.

L. G. was soon invited to open a similar inn at nearby Amherst, gradually built up a string of New England public houses including Treadway's best known, the Publick House at Sturbridge, Mass., where a colonial village has been reconstructed. He patterned his operation after colonial innkeeping, insisted on calling his managers innkeepers, worried only slightly about money. "I just love to run a nice place," he insists. "If I kept even, that's all I wanted." He had two basic rules: bedrooms should always be built around a good dining room, and executives should all have kitchen training. "Good hotelmen," says Treadway, "start in the kitchen."

Though L. G. Treadway, now 81, has retired, he still keeps in touch with Treadway's progress over a rickety upright telephone in his office at the Williams Inn. His son Richard, 52, is chairman of Treadway Inns, but his three sons have sold all but 25% of the corporation's 4,000 shares of stock to employees. Treadway's president and chief executive is J. Frank Birdsall Jr., 51, a Cornell hotel school graduate and experienced kitchen man who first worked for Treadway during college vacations. To its charm and cuisine, Treadway has lately added a computer that scans daily innkeeper reports and immediately spots overbudget spending or unnecessary additions to the 2,500-man staff. Rather than diminishing Treadway's image of individuality, the computer is adding to it. Freed from routine paper work, Treadway innkeepers can now spend more time caring for their guests.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.