Who owns ruths chris steak house

As he explained, dry-aging presents some disadvantages, including the additional cost of cold storage along with a certain degree of loss, which results in the meat becoming more expensive in the long run. Another problem Ruth's Chris Steak House encountered with dry-aged beef was spoilage.

While she would quickly get the customer a replacement steak, she also believed the whole experience left the restaurant "tainted" for those customers. She decided to switch to wet-aged steaks, which aged after being vacuum-packed in plastic and wouldn't go bad. However, as Fox News pointed out, wet-aged beef may deliver more consistency, but "it's a lot less robustly flavored than its more upscale counterpart, dry-aged meat," while admitting it's "very difficult to control perfect aging conditions.

According to NOLA. As The New York Times reported, the restaurant chain's corporate offices, located in the New Orleans suburb of Metairie, were likewise flooded. This led to a big change at the corporate level. The company's executives got together for a meeting to figure out the next move, ultimately determining the situation in New Orleans post-Katrina was simply too tenuous.

As a result, the decision was made to move the company's corporate headquarters from New Orleans to Orlando, Florida. Miller, chief executive of Ruth's Chris. According to the Orlando Sentinel , the company initially purchased an office building, but wound up selling the property for less than it paid when the company encountered a cash crunch and needed to pay debt.

In , Reuters reported that some current and former female staff members of Ruth's Chris Steak House launched a class-action lawsuit against the company, alleging gender discrimination. This was particularly ironic for a restaurant that was once renowned for hiring only women for its wait staff. While the lawsuit originally came from three women, a U. District judge ruled that the original suit could be amended to a class-action suit on behalf of all female Ruth's Chris employees.

According to Reuters , the lawsuit claimed that "the work environment at RCSH is one that is demeaning to women [and] reflects a culture of male domination and female subjugation," among other allegations.

She created a legendary culture of hospitality and service, and we are proud to continue to nurture and foster our inclusive environment. Ruth's Chris Steak House does not tolerate discrimination of any kind in our family of restaurants," said Henry, promising the company would "vigorously defend our position.

According to Detroit's WXYZ News , the restaurant launched the "summertime promotion" as a "fun and unique way for us to pay it forward" to its customers. Anyone who's named Chris or a variation such as Christopher or Christina would receive a free eight-ounce petite filet.

Meanwhile, another promotion offered a special gift to the class of As Charlotte's Spectrum News reported, all nine Ruth's Chris locations in North Carolina honored graduates by offering them a complimentary three-course dinner from the restaurants' Seasonal Classics Menu.

Two weeks after its April 3 launch, however, the PPP had completely run out of money. It soon became apparent that some not-so-small businesses exploited a loophole, with large corporations able to grab loans if those companies had less than employees in one of its locations. It didn't help that Ruth's Chris had laid off a "significant number of field and home office team members.

Shortly after, a Change. Our people, food and atmosphere are the anchors of our healthy core business. We focus on maintaining a strong business model by growing sales through traffic, managing operating margins and continually redefining the steak house dining experience. We make disciplined investments in future growth opportunities, targeting new company restaurant openings a year.

We evaluate new markets to identify the most attractive sales attributes and solid financial returns. Our franchisee program is a point of differentiation that enables system growth without additional company capital. As we achieve success through our business strategy and operational excellence, we return excess capital to shareholders.

Guests know they can expect high-quality food, an elevated bar and warm, friendly service whenever they dine at our restaurants. We group our revenue streams into three categories: restaurant sales, franchise income and other operating income. For complete information regarding our financials, see our periodic filings. We are managed and governed by some of the most tenured professionals in the hospitality industry, with proven success in leading restaurant operations.

She taught briefly at a junior college, and then married and began raising a family. In the early s, Fertel found herself divorced and working as a lab technician to support her two teenage sons. She was making enough to get by, but not enough to send her sons to college. So Fertel began looking for another line of business.

An advertisement for a local steak house somehow caught her eye. Although she had no experience in the restaurant business, Fertel decided to mortgage her house and buy Chris Steak House, a failed restaurant in a not too spiffy section of New Orleans. Chris Steak House had belonged to Chris Matulich, who operated the business for 35 years. He had sold the business, but took it over again when the new management went bankrupt. The steak house seated 60 people, had no parking lot, and was located near the New Orleans Fairgrounds racetrack.

Fertel worked doggedly, cutting her own beef as well as cooking, waitressing, and doing the books. A few months after opening, Hurricane Betsy devastated New Orleans, and Fertel was left with no electricity and a cooler full of expensive raw meat. She turned the disaster to her advantage, cooking steaks for the relief workers and displaced people in the neighborhood. She was also able to keep the restaurant open on Fridays, as the bishop of the New Orleans diocese temporarily suspended meatless Fridays because of the loss of local fisheries in the storm.

Fertel soon built a loyal customer base, and before long there were lines out the door. Fertel estimates that 90 to 95 percent of her customers were male, and her restaurant began to attract prominent local politicians and businessmen. With the great popularity of the new Chris Steak House, Fertel opened a second one four blocks away. Chris Matulich, the original restaurant's first owner, sued Fertel to keep her from calling her second steak house by the name he had established.

In Fertel's first restaurant burned down. Fertel relates in Entrepreneur Magazine that she called her bank in tears. But a man in the construction business happened to be in the bank at the time, and he assured Fertel he could erect a new restaurant for her in one week. He fulfilled his promise, and Fertel ended up with a much bigger restaurant seats versus the old She had no problem accommodating the crowd.

Fertel worked tirelessly at her two New Orleans restaurants, and apparently had not thought of expanding into other markets. Finally he complained that the drive was too much, and asked if he could open a Baton Rouge franchise. Fertel claimed in a July Restaurants and Institutions article that she did not know anything about franchising, but that she let the customer have his wish because she was a good judge of people.

The first franchise opened in Baton Rouge in , and the chain began to grow. The earliest franchisees were friends or customers, and Fertel kept close control, spending time at each new restaurant to make sure it was operating up to her standards. Around the time she started franchising, Fertel perfected Ruth's Chris special broiler, a high-heat 1, degree oven that seared the steaks. The franchised restaurants used this equipment as well, and basically followed the same menu.

Though there were local variations, the overriding theme of the restaurants was good steak. Fertel insisted that each franchised restaurant buy its meat from her Chicago supplier, to keep quality consistent across the chain. Fertel also picked her markets carefully.

In the early days, she was loathe to start a restaurant in a city without a professional football team. Her clientele continued to be overwhelmingly male, and football towns were the best bets for her kind of customer. Fertel also kept costs down by primarily moving new restaurants into existing locations. By taking over bankrupt restaurants, she avoided having to build from the ground up, and some of these failed restaurants had colorful histories. By the early s, Ruth's Chris was the only restaurant of its kind--an upscale steak house--that was growing through franchises.

Fertel still kept close tabs on every aspect of the business, but as the chain grew to about a dozen restaurants, she had to find more experienced management.