Norman Brinker - Down Under At Last

[Guest guest]

Founder of Outback Steakhouses, set up first anti-animal PAC with Ric

Berman, major supporter of Center for Consumer Freedom. Brinker died from

inhaling food while dining out.

 

NORMAN BRINKER, 78

 

Entreprenuer Pioneered Casual Dining, Invented Salad

Bar

 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/09/AR2009060903038_2.html

By

 

Joe Holley

Washington Post Staff Writer

Wednesday, June 10, 2009

Norman Brinker, 78, an innovative restaurant entrepreneur who

shaped Americans' eating-out habits by exploiting a niche between

fast-food and upscale restaurants with casual, full-service eateries

including Chili's Grill and Bar and Bennigans, died June 9 at a Colorado

Springs hospital.

The longtime Dallas resident was in Colorado Springs to celebrate his

78th birthday with his wife Toni and aspirated food while dining out a

week ago. Mr. Brinker, who had battled throat cancer in previous years,

died of aspiration pneumonia.

Mr. Brinker, the retired chairman of Dallas-based Brinker International

and a longtime Dallas resident, was credited with inventing the salad bar

at his Steak & Ale restaurants in the 1960s and the singles-oriented

" fern bar " concept when he created Bennigan's. Steak & Ale

set the prototype for subsequent Brinker ventures: dependable quality,

relatively modest prices, casual dining.

 

 

He was known not only for emphasizing friendly customer service, but also

for quick calibrations in response to changing customer tastes. Chili's,

for example, was one of the first chains to respond to consumer concerns

about health and nutrition by offering an array of chicken and fish

items, in addition to its steak and burger staples.

He also was a mentor to other restaurant entrepreneurs around the

country, including the CEOs of Outback Steakhouse, Houston's and the

Chuck E Cheese pizza chain.

" He was the most influential and impactful restaurant person in the

country, " said Doug Brooks, chief executive of Brinker

International. " He recognized that casual dining was where America

was going. "

Brooks, who joined Chili's in 1978, described Mr. Brinker as " a

consummate salesman " who combined business savvy and people skills.

 

In 1966, Mr. Brinker opened his first Steak & Ale restaurant with

$10,000 in savings and a $5,000 loan. When he sold the chain to Pillsbury

in 1976, it had grown to 109 units. Steak & Ale, with its trademark

half-timbered buildings and faux Old English theme, later went defunct.

 

In 1982, he was named president of the Pillsbury Restaurant Group, then

the second-largest restaurant organization in the world. He created the

Bennigan's chain during his time with Pillsbury.

After serving as chairman and chief executive of Burger King, Mr. Brinker

purchased Chili's, which had started as a Dallas hamburger joint and had

grown to 28 restaurants and $35 million in sales when he took over. He

took the chain public in 1983 under the brand Brinker International Inc.

Chili's now has about 900 company-owned restaurants and more than 550

franchises. Brinker International also owns Maggiano's Little Italy,

Romano's Macaroni Grill and On the Border Mexican Grill & Cantina,

totaling 1,700 restaurants in 27 countries.

Norman Eugene Brinker was born in Denver on June 3, 1931, and raised as

an only child on a hardscrabble farm near Roswell, N.M. " We were

very, very poor, " he told Nation's Restaurant News in 1996. Eager to

make money, he started with a paper route at age 10, and then got into

the business of breeding and raising cocker spaniels and rabbits.

 

Predictably, he ended up with a surplus of the long-eared furry

creatures, which gnawed through their hutches and taught the budding

entrepreneur a market lesson: " Be sure to get into something where

sales equal production, think about where you want to be before you start

and know how you're going to get out before you get in. "

 

He managed to liquidate his rabbit business at 14, began selling and

trading horses and was able to pay his way to New Mexico Military

Institute in Roswell. He also secured a berth on the U.S. International

Equestrian Jumping Team. He joined the Navy in 1952, was a member of the

U.S. Olympic Equestrian Team and later the U.S. Modern Pentathlon Team.

 

He moved to San Diego in 1955 and worked as a busboy at Jack in the Box

while going to school. In 1955, he married tennis star Maureen

" Little Mo " Connolly, who, as a 17-year-old in 1953, won the

first of three Wimbledon titles. (She died of breast cancer in 1969.)

 

His second marriage, to Magrit Fendt Brinker, ended in divorce, as did

his marriage to Nancy Goodman Brinker, a Republican fundraiser and U.S.

ambassador to Hungary under President George W. Bush. She is the founder,

at Mr. Brinker's suggestion, of the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer

Foundation, a charity named for her only sister, who died of the disease

at age 36.

 

 

Survivors include his wife of seven years, Toni Chapman Brinker of

Dallas; two daughters from his first marriage; and two children from his

second marriage.

Mr. Brinker received a bachelor's degree in marketing, with honors, from

San Diego State University in 1957. A week after graduating, he went to

work with Robert Peterson, founder of the Jack in the Box chain. He

stayed with Peterson until 1965, when he decided to venture out on his

own.

Moving to Dallas with his wife, he opened a daytime coffee shop called

Brink's before launching Steak & Ale. He retired as chairman of

Brinker International in 2000.

In 1993, Mr. Brinker suffered a near-fatal polo accident when his horse

fell on him during a match in Boca Raton, Fla. He was in a coma for three

weeks and paralyzed on his left side for three months but eventually

recovered. He was inducted into the Polo Hall of Fame in 1999.