Robert L. Brock
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Robert Lee Brock (December 27, 1924Obituary from Kansas Historical Society June 7, 1998) was an American businessman. He was born in Pawnee Rock, Kansas, and graduated from Sterling High School and the University of Kansas, where he was a member of
Tau Kappa Epsilon Tau Kappa Epsilon (), commonly known as or Teke, is a social college fraternities and sororities, fraternity founded on January 10, 1899, at Illinois Wesleyan University. The organization has chapters throughout the United States and Canada, maki ...
fraternity. He started "Inn Operations" with a friend and sold it to Holiday Inns, Inc., to manage "Topeka Inn Management". As chairman of TIM (later renamed Brock Hotel Corporation), the first and at the time largest franchisee of
Holiday Inn Holiday Inn by IHG is a chain of hotels based in Atlanta, Georgia and a brand of IHG Hotels & Resorts. The chain was founded in 1952 by Kemmons Wilson (1913–2003), who opened the first location in Memphis, Tennessee. The chain was a division ...
s, he founded ShowBiz Pizza Place in 1980 in
Topeka, Kansas Topeka ( ) is the capital city of the U.S. state of Kansas and the county seat of Shawnee County. It is along the Kansas River in the central part of Shawnee County, in northeastern Kansas, in the Central United States. As of the 2020 cen ...
after becoming a Pizza Time Theatre franchisee. He also started The Residence Inn line of hotels with Jack DeBoer. Marriott later bought the brand and renamed all locations " Residence Inn by Marriott".Now and then: The history of Residence Inn
/ref> ShowBiz Pizza Place Inc. later superseded Pizza Time Theatre Inc. after SPP bought the PTT assets and intellectual property in 1984. All SPP stores were renamed Chuck E. Cheese's by 1994. In 1998 ShowBiz Pizza Place Inc. was renamed CEC Entertainment Inc., and continues to do business under this name. He died on June 7, 1998 in
Dallas, Texas Dallas () is a city in the U.S. state of Texas and the most populous city in the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex, the List of Texas metropolitan areas, most populous metropolitan area in Texas and the Metropolitan statistical area, fourth-most ...
.


See also

* Chuck E. Cheese * Aaron Fechter * ShowBiz Pizza Place * Nolan Bushnell


References


External links


CJ Online's T-Town News
(Dead) {{DEFAULTSORT:Brock, Robert L. 1998 deaths 1924 births People from Barton County, Kansas University of Kansas alumni American hoteliers Deaths from cancer in Kansas Kansas Democrats