| Type | Wholly owned subsidiary Private |
|---|---|
| Industry | Restaurants |
| Genre | Casual dining |
| Founded | 1988 |
| Founder(s) | Bob Basham Trudy Cooper Chris T. Sullivan Tim Gannon |
| Headquarters | Tampa, Florida, U.S. |
| Number of locations | 968 (December 2010)[1] |
| Area served | North America, Australia, Caribbean, Southeast Asia, Brazil, China, Costa Rica, Guam, Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Philippines, United Kingdom, Venezuela |
| Products | American cuisine |
| Parent | OSI Restaurant Partners, LLC |
| Website | Outback.com |
Outback Steakhouse is an American casual dining restaurant chain based in Tampa, Florida with over 1200 locations in 22 countries throughout North and South America, Europe, Asia, and Australia. It was founded in February 1988 in Tampa by Bob Basham, Chris T. Sullivan, Trudy Cooper and Tim Gannon, and is now owned and operated in the United States by OSI Restaurant Partners, and by other franchise and venture agreements internationally.
In 1997, Outback entered the South Korean market through the franchise agreement with Aussie Chung Inc. Currently, there are 101 Outback Steakhouse locations throughout South Korea. On June 14, 2007, OSI Restaurant Partners completed a stock repurchase plan, and the company is now privately held.
Canadian Outback restaurants began in 1996. In March 2009 Outback Steakhouse Canada abruptly closed all nine locations in the province of Ontario, citing poor economic conditions. In June 2009, an Outback restaurant reopened in Niagara Falls. Three Outback locations continue to operate in Edmonton, Alberta.
Contents |
All meat is heavily seasoned; there is a 17 spice blend for the steaks themselves. Outback bills its food as "full flavor". It fries its food in vegetable shortening, and uses real butter and heavy cream in many dishes. Burgers are ground from beef tenderloin.
Although a number of menu items are grilled, steaks are prepared on a griddle using butter as a heat transfer medium.
Many Outback Restaurants now offer the option to have your steak grilled over an open oak wood flame. These steaks are seasoned with a lighter blend, and butter is not used. This provides a healthier option, while maintaining flavor because of the oak smoke.
The use of fats in such liberal quantities has brought the chain under scrutiny by Men's Health magazine, which condemned Outback's Aussie Cheese Fries as "The Worst Food in America," with 182 grams (1,638 calories) of fat and nearly 3,000 calories per order.[2]
The Bloomin' Onion is a signature Outback item. It is a one pound onion cut to 'bloom' open, breaded, deep-fried and served with mayonnaise-horseradish sauce. Other restaurants offer items similar to the Bloomin' Onion, as in Chili's Awesome Blossom (discontinued) and Lone Star Steakhouse & Saloon's Texas Rose.
Outback's bar selections are also highly regionalized. Most Outbacks serve Foster's Lager, an Australian brand of beer exported around the world. Other Australian beers served often include Coopers Premium Lager, Coopers Sparkling Ale, Coopers Pale Ale, Toohey's New Draught, and Boag's. Wine selections also vary, but often include those from Australian wineries like Yellow Tail, and Foster's Group holdings Lindemans and Rosemount Estates.
Outback also offers a gluten free menu which includes most of its normal menu items with slight variations.
Outback did not display full nutritional data on their food until early 2010.[3]
Outback has now added a "light style" option to the menu. This option is designed to prepare meals under 500 calories by carefully proportioning out sides and preparing the meals without butter and added fats.[4]
Outback Steakhouse has a program to support the communities in which their restaurants are located.[5] On a national level Outback partners with Heineken USA and their Heineken with a Heart program to raise funds for various organizations in these communities. Outback also sponsors the NCAA football Outback Bowl.
The company and its founders are major contributors, via the Outback Steakhouse PAC, to the Republican Party, contributing $303,015 and $334,197 for the 2000 and 2004 election cycles, respectively.[6][7] The Outback Steakhouse PAC itself is one of the largest donors in the food and beverage sector, second only to the National Restaurant Association, which itself represents 300,000 restaurants.[8]
|
||||||||||||||||||||