About Us
History of New England Based Restaurant Chain
Bickford’s history dates back to the 1920’s when Samuel Bickford opened his first Bickford’s cafeteria. Throughout the next 40 years, Sam, and eventually his son, Harold, worked to expand their cafeteria chain throughout the Northeast and into California. However, it was not until 1959 that Harold introduced a new concept to New England, the first Bickford’s Pancake House – the first such specialty restaurant in New England which opened in Peabody, Massachusetts in October, 1959. The concept was a huge success.
Over the next three decades, Bickford’s Pancake House chain slowly grew to include 30 restaurants throughout New England and became a family restaurant that focused on breakfast, along with lunch and dinner offerings. In the 1990’s the number grew to almost 70 and it continued to be known as a great New England breakfast tradition. At that time the menu expanded to include fresh turkey, roasted daily in the restaurants, which is used for the turkey club sandwich, hot open faced turkey sandwich and our traditional turkey dinner. These are still some of the all- time favorites on our menu.
The Bickfords chain has continue to evolve by upgrading the quality of its offerings to include fresh seafood delivered daily from our local purveyor, Ipswich Shellfish Company. The Icelandic haddock is one of our top sellers and continues to bring in new customers and repeat customers every day. Our fisherman’s platter sports a combination of fried haddock, fried whole-belly clams and fried scallops along with hand cut, homemade onion rings, fries and coleslaw. In addition to this wonderful seafood, our steak tips are sirloin and our half pound burgers are Certified Angus Beef. All of our salads are made to order. Our aim is to provide our guests with a delicious, fresh meal every time they visit.
According to our managers, “our guests have responded really positively to the changes. We’ve kept the value in place while offering high quality meals during all parts of the day and that makes people come back more often.”
The Bickfords chain now consists of three restaurants, all in Massachusetts. Woburn and Burlington operate as Bickfords Grille while Acton remains Bickfords Family Restaurant. Some locations have private meeting and function rooms, flat screen TVs throughout and all serve liquor, beer & wine. Bickford's offers dining options for everyone.