Here's some history and information on JIB from an informational site on FF companies out there on the web. http://www.99w.com/evilsam/ff/index.htm
"Here is a company that has gone through so many lows, it's almost impossible to imagine the highs they experience now. The company had a product that was regarded by reputation as bad at best, only topped by the E-Coli tragedy. Everything about them seemed low class. Jack could do nothing right.
If it takes a great CEO to make a great company, The Jack in the Box chain can thank its fictional CEO, the clown-headed Jack (last name "Box"), for the turnaround.
The fictional Mr. Box has starred in over 300 commercials for the chain, one of the funniest and most effective ad campaigns in history. Jack is full of wit when marketing the food line with slogans like "They're cheesy...but in a good way" in referring to the cheese sticks, and "We don't make it till you order it...Except the drink...Make it yourself" in reference to the self-serve drink station. This in addition to significant improvement in product quality, has made Jack in the Box one of the healthiest QSR operations in the world.
Robert Peterson started the original Jack in the Box in 1951 with a drive-thru restaurant in San Diego. Peterson dabbled in a number of concepts, then started a food distributorship and named the whole company "San Diego Commissary", later changed to "Foodmaker". Ralston Purina purchased a majority share of Foodmaker in 1968 and started expanding eastward. This was scaled back with hundreds of closures by the 1980's. Foodmaker was bought out from Ralston Purina by a management group in 1985, went public, went private, and went public again in 1992. The company changed its name to Jack in the Box, Inc in 1999.
Before 1980, Jack's mascot clown's existence was that as a fixture on the drive-thru speaker (the whole body of the thing was a clown head that you talked into). The company decided an image change towards more "adult fare" was in order, and in a commercial, they blew up the drive-thru clown. The next fifteen years were sort of disastrous, but especially so in 1993.
In 1993, America first heard of E. Coli. They heard about this when four people died and about 700 became ill from eating undercooked contaminated hamburgers at Jack in the Box restaurants in Washington state.
E. coli bacteria lives in the intestines of cattle, and can be spread to meat through poor butchering. Even then, it's on the surface of the meat. Thorough cooking can kill it, so when you're having a steak at a restaurant, you can still order meat rare, and as long as the surface is thoroughly browned, you're fine. But hamburger is ground steak, so what was the surface is mixed throughout the meat. That's why hamburgers need to be cooked through.
Foodmaker survived this disaster by working quickly. They were working with food safety experts within a week of the problem cropping up. They implemented a HACCP (Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points) system amongst other unheard of safety measures and became the leader in restaurant food safety. They settled lawsuits involving ill customers within about a year. They took responsibility, and they handled the situation. This crisis should have killed them. It didn't. There are few people in the industry who will speak of the company negatively about the E. Coli disaster. Foodmaker did everything right in handling the problem as best as possible. Jack in the Box restaurants in the Pacific Northwest, whose sales dropped 80 percent after the breakout, were back to near normal sales levels within six months.
In 1995, the clown came back. Jack Box began appearing in ads as the company's fictional CEO, starting things out by blowing up the boardroom that blew HIM up fifteen years previous. The suave, witty, well dressed CEO was an instant smash and led the company to new levels of success (and antenna ball sales).
No campaign, no matter how good, would make up for bad food. And the product was pretty bad when I first tried Jack. That was before the "We won't make it until you order it" policy went into effect. When THAT happened, Jack had a winner.
The Jack in the Box menu is extensive. There's the usual line of burgers (highlighted as of late by a sirloin burger line) and an interesting line of alternates like egg rolls, "bacon potato cheddar wedges", and tacos. The unique tacos are pre-manufactured at a plant (beef in a soft folded corn shell) and shipped frozen. The restaurant deep-fries the taco shell with beef inside, sealed, then pinches them open to add lettuce, sauce, and two small slices of American cheese.
The Jack in the Box menu is also constantly evolving. A lot of things have come and gone from the menu over the years. They've tried many different sandwiches, sides, salads, and sauces. Who can forget the Bacon-Bacon Cheeseburger, the Pannidos, the Pastrami sandwich...the list goes on and on. Deep fried macaroni and cheese wedges and breakfast bowls here today...gone tomorrow?
Some of their menu items today don't even use the same ingredients they did a few years ago. The key component to disappear is Mayo-Onion sauce. This used to top several burgers including the Jumbo Jack (replaced with ketchup in most of the country, mustard in Texas) and even the Ultimate Breakfast Sandwich. That one just isn't the same anymore. Thankfully, I've found I can replicate the classic at home. In fact, mine is a little better. My version of Mayo-Onion sauce: 1 small jar Kraft Mayonnaise, 2 tablespoons McCormick Onion Juice, 2 tablespoons minced onion. Mix well and allow to set for a day.
Most drive-thru's are open 24 hours, and ALL menu items are available during breakfast hours. Some locations also offer the whole breakfast menu 24 hours, but some cut it off after 11 or so.
Jack in the Box is working towards a national presence which includes a new look at franchising (Jack in the Box hasn't offered franchising in years). Theyr also co-branded restaurants with convenience stores in a way nobody else did...Jack in the Box actually operated both the restaurant and convenience store. The "Quick Stuff" stores are typical of modern convenience store chains with lots of gas pumps. The Jack in the Box restaurants adjacent are full-size operations, not "express" locations with limited menus. In 2008, Jack in the Box announced it was putting the Quick Stuff stores up for sale. They were keeping the attached restaurants, though.
A new "innovation center" is up and running trying new ideas. Some of those new ideas were implemented in a test fast-casual concept restaurant called "JBX" in 2004 and 2005, but JBX was scrapped. Jack in the Box is also aggressively expanding their Fresh-Mex chain, Qdoba Mexican Grills.
Go Jack Go."
