The website vipsrestaurants.com was formerly used by VIP’s (also styled as Vip’s or VIPs), a now-defunct American casual dining restaurant chain that operated primarily in the western United States from 1968 until the late 1980s.
Founded in Oregon by Keith Andler and Robert Smith, VIP’s was a Denny’s-style “coffee shop” chain (24-hour diners with freeway-adjacent locations) that grew to over 50 locations across Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Nevada, and northern California at its peak, making it the largest restaurant chain headquartered in Oregon during its heyday.
The chain was gradually sold off:
- In 1982 → 35 locations to Denny’s.
- In 1984 → 16 more to JB’s Restaurants.
- Remaining sites (including some rebranded Tex-Mex concepts like La Casa Real) were disposed of by the mid-1990s.
The parent company (VIP’s Restaurants, Inc., later VIP’s Industries) shifted focus to other ventures like hotels before the restaurant brand fully disappeared. Note that this is unrelated to the separate Mexican/Spanish Vips chain (owned by Alsea/Walmart de México) or various small independent diners that have used similar names. The domain vipsrestaurants.com (with the plural “restaurants”) most likely belonged to the original Oregon-based chain during its active years or shortly after.
