After 1975, new parlour openings slowed considerably. Some significant money-losing parlours were closed, including Oklahoma City, Northglenn (Colorado), and Massapequa (New York). Other pending leases were cancelled before the stores were built. The closing of these stores and subsequent accounting write-offs contributed to a $4 million loss for the division in fiscal year 1976 (which ended in July, 1976). Bob Farrell resigned from Marriott, and the reigns were turned over to Tom Petika. Tom had already spent 19 years with Marriott, working in the Hot Shoppes restaurant division, Corporate Personnel, Cafeterias and the Roy Rogers restaurant division. With this shift, Farrell's corporate office, which had been in Portland, relocated to the Marriott headquarters in the Washington, DC area.

Tom's mantra was "you gotta believe". His objective for the division was to achieve average parlour sales of $1 million by 1980. The reasoning behind this seemed logical: inflation at the time was around 13%, and if each parlour could increase guest counts by 3% each year, a million dollar average volume was achievable. And, if this sales level was reached while keeping costs under control, the division would again be profitable enough to do something with.

Marriott knew (somewhat) how to run restaurants, but it did not understand the ice cream parlour concept. One thing the Marriott Corporation knew how to do was use consultants. A study was commissioned to determine what direction Farrell's should take going forward. The study mapped three courses of action:

1. Keep Farrell's the way it was. This was the least risky alternative. It also provided no method for improving profitability for the division.
2. Abandon food items and focus solely on the ice cream business. This was determined to be infeasible particularly since half the sales in mall-based parlours was from the kitchen menu.
3. Redesign the chain to provide a more food-centric focus. This was the most risky, in terms of affecting the public's perception of Farrell's. It was also the most costly in terms of menu redesign, new food items, new parlour decor, etc.

Marriott selected option 3 and made some cosmetic changes to Farrell's, including changing the official name to "Farrell's Dining and Ice Cream Parlour", and unveiling the "Hollywood Menu". This menu replaced the legendary newsprint-style menus with a colorful tri-fold cardboard menu. A greater emphasis was placed on food items, and the food menu was expanded while ice cream was de-emphasized. This concept lasted for one year, without much success. 

Marriott commissioned a new market survey in late 1976-early 1977 to find out what customers wanted from Farrell's; this time the answer, not surprisingly, was "atmosphere", not fancy sandwiches (one of the key phrases in the study was that the customer "prefers the sizzle to the steak"). So in the summer of 1977, the paper menus returned to the parlours, and Farrell's Dining and Ice Cream Parlour once again became Farrell's Ice Cream Parlour Restaurant.

Christmas at Troy - Fountain style (submitted by Susan Accomando)

This, however, did not restore the chain to profitability - it merely preserved the status quo. The next three years under Marriott consisted primarily of implementing any and all cost-cutting measures (particularly on the food procurement), and ridding itself of unprofitable parlours. Most of the remote parlours were re-franchised to individual owners. These parlours included:

• Charlotte, North Carolina
• Fayetteville, North Carolina
• Atlanta, Georgia (3 locations)
• Murray, Utah
• Denver, Colorado
• North Little Rock, Arkansas
• Albuquerque, New Mexico
• SW 76th St, Portland, Oregon

Other stores were closed outright, including Macon, Georgia and Wichita, Kansas. New parlours were the exception rather than the rule. By June, 1978, there were 106 parlours operating, down from a high of 120 stores at the end of 1975. The last company-owned parlour to open was at the Ford City Shopping Center in Chicago, Illinois in 1977 (one data source states that the University Square store in Tampa, Florida in early 1978, but that has not been verified). New franchise parlours weren't quite done yet; A new franchise was opened in Hawaii in 1981, and in 1983 a franchise parlour was opened in Little Rock, Arkansas.

Another initiative undertaken by the division was known as "Deliberate Change". The purpose of this program was to ensure that costly investments in unsuccessful programs (such as the Hollywood Menu) would not recur. Some of the changes implemented under Deliberate Change included:

• Frozen hamburgers replacing fresh hand-pressed burgers.
• Replacement of All-beef franks with cheaper, all-meat hot dogs.
• Replacement of the Farrell's recipe ice creams with standard commercial-grade.
• The free birthday sundae was reduced from two scoops to one.
• Sandwich recipes were converted to toasted bread from fresh bread (eliminated quality issues with day-old bread).
• Pizza was rolled out to all company-owned free-standing parlours.
• Janitorial service contracts were cancelled.
• Video games were introduced to many parlours.

Recognizing both the value of the data collected by the birthday club, and with an eye toward managing its associated costs, Marriott computerized the national birthday database. Prior to 1979, each parlour maintained the birthday cards in boxes, mailing batches out twice monthly to those who filled out their cards.

Old-style birthday card

By replacing this system with a computerized process, Marriott could

1. Relieve the individual parlours of the burden of maintaining thousands of cards.
2. Ensure that birthday club participants would receive their birthday card on a timely basis each year.
3. Develop a massive marketing database which they could potentially offer to mailing houses (a check box was included on the form for those who did not wish to be included on that list).

Birthday form introduced in 1979

By 1979, the Farrell's division was (barely) operating in the black, and there were some encouraging signs. The parlour in Seattle's Southcenter shopping center was the first company-owned Farrell's to achieve $1 million in annual sales. While guest counts were still declining, sales were improving and the chain was making money. Behind the scenes, Marriott had put the division up for sale, with no takers. In an effort to boost sales and profits, Marriott launched a national television advertising campaign for Farrell's in 1980. The effects of this campaign were immediately noticeable - birthday party reservations were up substantially from the previous year, and customer counts had almost stopped declining. Five company-owned parlours had achieved $1 million in sales in 1980, and that feat would not be achieved again.

While the media campaign had done its part to boost sales, it was not profitable due to the geographic dispersal of the parlours. National television advertising was wasted on the 32 states that did not have company-owned parlours. Regional advertising would be expensive - a large market like Chicago would be expensive to advertise in when there were only three parlours in the entire market.

1980 also marked the company-wide rollout of the Salad Bar. This was a reaction to the proliferation of salad bars in other restaurants nationwide. Where did the salad bar go? In the same place formerly occupied by the player piano, of course. Where'd the piano go? Out. Leased pianos were returned to the supplier, and company-owned pianos were sold for pittances. This did not help atmosphere. Luckily there was a salad bar for the kids to "ooh" and "ahh" at. Salad bars were not well-received in those free-standing parlours which had them, so they were eventually phased out of that group of parlours.

Marriott had begun installing video arcade games in all of its parlours around the same time. This effort was thwarted, however, when complaints were lodged in the shopping malls from the existing arcades. The leases that Farrell's had with the malls prohibited Farrell's from installing coin-operated games and competing with the arcades.

Product testing was being done at the parlours near the Marriott headquarters. Items such as frozen yogurt and croissant sandwiches were being piloted. 

Another mall-store concept (which was the precursor for what was to come) was the "quiet lunch". In an effort to cater to the professional workers who might frequent the parlours, no bells or sirens were to be sounded between 11 am and 2 pm on weekdays. Birthday celebrations were low key, with a gentle drum roll and soft singing voices. As part of this initiative, silk flowers and lunchtime placemats became part of the standard table settings during lunchtime only. Even the honky-tonk music was replaced with easy-listening (somehow, the thought of eating a banana split to the tunes of Gordon Lightfoot just didn't work).

In 1981, television advertising ceased, and by 1982 sales began dropping precipitously nationwide. This is due to several factors, including:

• the success of Chuck E Cheese in the children's birthday market,
• the national rise of Denny's, with its "Free meal on Your Birthday" program,
• McDonald's successful expansion inside shopping centers, which really hurt the mall-based parlours.

In late 1981, Marriott had reached an agreement in principle to sell the Farrell's chain to private investors. Things were about to get interesting.