The Brinker brand of restaurants: from fast food to casual dining, the wide range of Brinker-influenced concepts reflect his 'enlightened' management style

Nation's Restaurant News,  August 20, 2007  

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Everyone knows about Steak and Ale and Chili's, but few people have heard of Brink's, Kona Ranch Steakhouse or Flyer's Island Express. Norman Brinker was involved with dozens of restaurants during his career. Some grew into successful chains, and others were learning experiences.

After he graduated from San Diego State University in 1957, Brinker went to work for Jack in the Box, a new five-unit chain. Brinker's college friend, Marvin Braddock, worked for another Peterson chain, Oscar's coffee shops.

Brinker did for the fast-food chain what he would later do for many more chains. "He brought new energy and life to the concept," said Braddock, who worked with Brinker at several chains.

Brinker traveled to Phoenix, Houston and Dallas to open new Jack in the Box locations. He soon invested his and wife Maureen Connolly Brinker's $3,500 savings to became 20-percent owners of Jack in the Box. The chain and the investment grew, and Brinker decided he wanted to open his own restaurant. He left Jack in the Box in 1964 and cashed in his ownership stake for $80,000. He and his wife then opened Brink's, a coffee shop, in Dallas.

They struggled with the breakfast day-part. "The coffee shop wasn't that profitable, and it was a lot of hard work," Braddock said. Meanwhile, the coffee-shop concept was waning. Foodmaker, Jack in the Box's parent company, eventually closed 2 dozen Oscar's units and instead turned its focus to the fast-food concept with its drive-thru, a novelty at the time. Today the publicly traded Jack in the Box has more than 2,000 quick-serve burger restaurants and 350 Qdoba Mexican Grills. Brinker ultimately sold Brink's coffee shop to a family that kept it open a few more years.

CASUAL DINING

Brinker decided to open a new restaurant that would emulate Cork 'n Cleaver, a restaurant he had seen in Phoenix. Brinker's version was Steak and Ale, which he opened in Dallas in 1965. Instead of careerists, he hired students from nearby Southern Methodist University. The atmosphere and price points of the steakhouse fell somewhere between the fine-dining and fast-food niches, and thus casual dining was born.

"Before that, when you went out, it was slow and you had to dress up," said Carl Hays, a senior vice president at Steak and Ale in the 1970s."[Brinker] made the place fun."

The place also had a salad bar, which made the wait time for the main course more pleasant for customers. Brinker did not invent the salad bar, but he did expand upon it. "We were the first chain to take the salad bar national," said Lou Neeb, another 1970s Steak and Ale executive, who eventually became chief operating officer. He said their version featured a wider selection of salad dressings as well as then-exotic ingredients such as cherry tomatoes and jalapenos.

In the early 1970s Brinker tried to open more casual-dining restaurants. One was called Rafters and opened in Portland, Ore. The other was Granny's Attic, which opened in Huntington Beach, Calif. Neeb said those concepts proved too complex to grow into chains.

Those locations eventually were converted to Bennigan's, launched in 1976. Bennigan's featured some of the menu items from Rafters and Granny's Attic.

The Brinker touch extended to human resources. "There were a lot of entrepreneurs that didn't trust anyone, and if you are walking on eggshells and someone can fire you, you're not going to be creative and you're not going to contribute much," Hays said. "Norman wanted to know what you were thinking and whether you liked working there."

GOING CORPORATE

Brinker took S&A Restaurant Corp. public in 1971, and by 1976 the company had 113 locations of Steak and Ale, Jolly Ox--the name Steak and Ale used in markets that didn't allow a reference to liquor in a restaurant name, and Bennigan's. Pillsbury, which owned Burger King, bought S&A in 1976, and Brinker became chairman of the Pillsbury Restaurant Group.

Campbell said Brinker led by inquiry, not by assertions. "He was a very different kind of leader than we were used to at Burger King. He had a very enlightened management style, which, frankly, we were not used to. We were used to the 'my way or the highway' type," Campbell said.

He added that Brinker sped up the rate of new store openings from 120 a year to 300 a year. The company also continued to open Steak and Ale and Bennigan's restaurants. "He was the champion for restaurants on the Pillsbury board," Campbell said. "The Pillsbury culture was all packaged goods, so they were not always comfortable with some of the demands that are characteristic of the restaurant industry, like the way you invest capital in this business."

Brinker also endorsed Campbell and his department's idea for the Battle of the Burgers advertising campaign. Grand Metropolitan Plc purchased Pillsbury in 1989, and Texas Pacific Group acquired Burger King in 2002. Today Plano, Texas-based Metromedia Restaurant Group owns the 310 locations of Bennigan's and 60 locations of Steak and Ale.