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TGI Fridays and Applebee's launched America's casual dining boom in the late 1960s.
These restaurants served burgers, steaks, and salads at $8-15 per plate, filling the market gap between 50-cent McDonald's hamburgers and $30 steakhouse dinners.
These new food joints spread across suburban strip malls nationwide by 1980.
From 1876 to the early 1900s, the Fred Harvey Company built clean, well-staffed restaurants and hotels at train stations across the American West.
The company hired young women as waitresses—called Harvey Girls—who served hot meals on spotless tablecloths to rail passengers.
Before Harvey's restaurants, travelers ate rancid food from rickety platform carts.
The Harvey Girls' professional service and the company's reliable standards reshaped frontier dining.
Applebee's was founded in 1980 when Bill and T.J. Palmer opened their first casual pub in Decatur, Georgia.
The restaurant chain expanded nationwide and drew IHOP's $2.1 billion buyout in 2007.
A decade later, Applebee's reversed slumping sales by introducing dollar cocktails—including its "Dollarita" margaritas and Long Island iced teas.
Outback Steakhouse is an American casual dining chain founded in 1988 in Tampa, Florida, with an Australian theme across its 1,000+ global locations.
The company owns two blimps named after its signature Bloomin' Onion appetizer and is a top political donor in its industry.
The Cheesecake Factory started as a Detroit bakery in 1940, with Evelyn Overton baking cheesecakes in her basement.
In 1978, her son David opened the first restaurant in Beverly Hills, using his mother's bakery concept into a full-service establishment.
The chain built its reputation on a 200-page menu and portions large enough to share.
In 2020, the SEC fined the company $125,000 for misleading investors about its financial stability during the pandemic by failing to disclose it was losing $6 million per week in early closures.
General Mills launched Olive Garden in 1982.
The restaurant chain grew rapidly, opening 145 locations within seven years.
Despite its success, Olive Garden later fabricated marketing claims about training chefs at a Tuscan cooking school.
In reality, managers stayed at an Italian hotel and spent minimal time observing one local restaurant.
Larry Lavine opened the first Chili's in 1975, converting a Dallas postal station into a casual dining spot.
Today, the chain operates 1,600+ restaurants globally.
In 2024, the Beastie Boys sued Chili's parent company for using their song "Sabotage" in social media ads without authorization.
Danny's Donuts opened in 1953, selling only donuts.
The shop expanded into a coffee shop chain, changed its name to Denny's, and began serving meals around the clock.
In 1988, Denny's faced an unusual problem when deciding to close for Christmas—their buildings lacked locks.
Having operated continuously since opening, many locations had either never installed locks or had misplaced their keys, forcing them to purchase new ones for their first-ever closure.
TGI Fridays began in 1965 when Alan Stillman opened a bar in Manhattan at First Avenue and 63rd Street.
The location proved strategic, as the next door stood an apartment building housing 480 flight attendants.
Young singles flocked to the bar, transforming New York's social landscape.
The concept caught fire, spawning franchises across America.
By 2009, its success peaked when the Haymarket location in London set the chain's all-time weekly profit record.
Red Lobster's decline from seafood pioneer to bankruptcy mirrors its miscalculation of American appetites.
Founded in 1968 in Lakeland, Florida, the chain expanded to 700 restaurants before collapsing in 2024.
Their "Ultimate Endless Shrimp" promotion in 2023 backfired when customers devoured more shellfish than expected, forcing two price hikes that contributed to an $11 million loss.
P.F. Chang's opened its first restaurant in Scottsdale, Arizona in 1993.
Today, diners eat its American Chinese dishes at 300 locations across 22 countries.
When the chain finally entered China in 2018, it marketed itself not as Chinese food, but as an "American bistro" — a telling shift that highlights the restaurant's hybrid identity.
Sandy Beall opened the first Ruby Tuesday in 1972 near the University of Tennessee, using $10,000 borrowed from a friend.
The name came from the Rolling Stones song.
In 2008, the company created a miniature set and used special effects to film what appeared to be the accidental destruction of a neighboring building during a Ruby Tuesday demolition, promoting their brand refresh.
In 1982, Jim Disbrow and Scott Lowery searched Kent, Ohio for Buffalo-style chicken wings and found none.
This sparked them to launch Buffalo Wild Wings & Weck.
When Sally Smith stepped in as CFO in 1994, she discovered years of missing financial records—the founders hadn't tracked whether they were making or losing money before 1995.
Founded in Burbank in 1958, IHOP began as a single pancake restaurant and expanded to 1,800 locations worldwide.
The chain bought Applebee's in 2007 for $2.1 billion, later sparking headlines with its temporary "IHOb" rebrand to spotlight its burger menu.
Now, IHOP plans to merge its breakfast identity with Applebee's bar-and-grill concept through dual-branded restaurants.
Dan Evins opened the first Cracker Barrel in Lebanon, Tennessee in 1969, combining a gas station with a restaurant that served Southern comfort food.
The chain grew steadily, reaching 660 locations across 45 states by 2023.
Beyond food service, each location featured a retail store stocked with country-themed merchandise and local crafts.
In the early 1990s, the company enforced a policy requiring employees to exhibit "normal heterosexual values," leading to discriminatory firings.
After lawsuits and public outcry, Cracker Barrel reversed this policy.
Sam's Tavern opened in Seattle in 1940.
Owner Samuel Caston sang in a barbershop quartet, where his rendition of "When the Red, Red Robin" inspired the restaurant's later name: Red Robin.
In 2014, developers razed the original location and built an apartment complex called Robin's Nest.
Kent Taylor launched Texas Roadhouse in 1993 from a single Clarksville, Indiana location.
The steakhouse grew into 600+ restaurants spanning 11 countries.
During COVID-19's peak in 2020, Taylor gave up his $800,000 compensation to help workers survive the pandemic.
He died by suicide in March 2021, following severe complications from tinnitus.
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