When we picked the Marriott family for this months Famous Utah, we had no idea the incredible impact and how much they were on the forefront of the hospitality industry. From what we learned discussing and researching the Marriott family, their passion for business and customer service is what has given them their almost 100 year legacy.
A little background on Marriott-Slaterville, Utah. Marriott-Slaterville City was originally settled by several Mormon pioneer families, in 1852, including the Richard Slater family, and the Perry, Smout, Marriott and Field families. Many living descendants of these families, including relatives of J. Willard Marriott, pioneer hotelier of the 20th century and founder of Marriott International, still reside within Marriott-Slaterville. Weber State University has an online history of the city and you can read that by clicking HERE.
The patriarch of the family J. Willard Marriott was born at Marriott Settlement (present day Marriott-Slaterville, Utah mentioned above), the second of eight children of Hyrum Willard Marriott and Ellen Morris Marriott. As a child, “Bill”, as J. Willard was called, helped to raise sugar beets and sheep on his family’s farm. At age 13, Marriott raised lettuce on several fallow acres on the farm and the harvest at summer’s end brought $2,000, which Marriott gave to his father. The next year, Hyrum entrusted Marriott, his eldest son, with the sale of a herd of 3,000 sheep, sending him and the sheep unescorted by rail to San Francisco.(from www.marriott.com)
Benjamin Urrutia of the Utah Encyclopedia writes, “In 1927 he opened up a small root beer stand in Washington, D.C., and then quickly upgraded the stand to a restaurant called the Hot Shoppe. He soon opened two others. When the Great Depression hit, he was forced to sell all three. However, he replaced them with two new ones in carefully chosen locations. The Depression also caused the loss of $8,000 of his savings when his bank closed down. But even in these difficult times, chain-store merchandising, with its huge volume and low prices, was thriving. Marriott was determined to apply the same principles to the restaurant business… Marriott could now be said to have invented the drive-in restaurant, now a part of the American urban and suburban landscape. In 1937 he began catered meal service for airlines. Besides restaurants and catering, his empire eventually grew to include hotels, cruise liners, and amusement parks. In 1948 he was elected president of the National Restaurant Association.”
Also of note with Mr. Marriott’s Hot Shoppe restaurants in Arlington, Va., they were the first well-known restaurant chain to abandon the color line in Virginia and open their doors to blacks. The move was greeted with jubilation at the annual convention of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, then taking place in St. Paul.
Lee Benson of the Deseret News wrote, “In 2019, at more than 7,500 Marriott properties around the world, no less than 760,000 people — a number that exceeds the entire population of northern Utah — wear the Marriott employee name badge on a daily basis.”
Through their family history they have developed an incredible philanthropic outreach. They offer community outreach, mentoring programs, funding medical research, and education. You can learn more about their programs on their foundation website.
According to Marriott himself, “You’ve got to make your employees happy. If the employees are happy, they are going to make the customers happy.”
Some of our resources this episode: J Willard Marriott Wikipedia/ Utah History Encyclopedia/ Deseret News/ Marriott Foundation/ NY Times Obituary
Music By: Folk Hogan; Bootleggers Dance