Chili's

Chili's Grill & Bar
Wholly owned subsidiary
Industry Restaurant
Genre Casual dining
Founded March 13, 1975
Founder Larry Lavine
Headquarters 6820 LBJ Freeway
Dallas, Texas, U.S. 75240
Number of locations
 1500
Area served
 Worldwide
Key people
 Kelli Valade, COO
Products American cuisine
Tex-Mex cuisine
Parent Brinker International
Website www.chilis.com/EN/Pages/home.aspx
Footnotes / references
[1][2]

Chili's Grill & Bar is an international casual dining restaurant chain that features Tex-Mex-style cuisine. The company was founded by Larry Levine in Texas in 1975 and is currently owned and operated by Brinker International. Chili's is a premier casual dining restaurant company and has received numerous accolades through the years for its outstanding performance. They have been recognized as one of the "World's Most Admired Food Services Companies" by Fortune Magazine for an exclusive brand of hospitality.

History

Chili's in Santa Clara, California

Chili's first location, a converted postal station on Greenville Ave. in the Vickery Meadows area of Dallas, Texas, opened in 1975. The original Chili's on Greenville Ave. moved to a new building on the same site in 1981 before relocating again in 2007.[3]

Lavine's concept was to create an informal, full-service dining restaurant with a menu featuring different types of hamburgers offered at an affordable price. The brand proved successful, and by the early 1980s there were 28 Chili's locations in the region, all featuring similar Southwest decor.[4]

In 1983, Lavine sold the company to restaurant executive Norman E. Brinker, formerly of the Pillsbury restaurant group that owned Bennigan's.[4]

Menu

Chili's in Khobar, Saudi Arabia
Chili's in Santiago, Dominican Republic, next to Häagen-Dazs.
Chili's in Makati City, Philippines

Chili's serves American food influenced by Tex-Mex cuisine.

In addition to their regular menu, the company offers a nutritional menu, allergen menu, and vegetarian menu. They also offer a veggie burger (non-vegan) that is supplied by the Kellogg Company.[5]

Advertising

"Chili's (Welcome to Chili's!)" is an advertising jingle used in Chili's Restaurant commercials to advertise the restaurant's line of baby back ribs. The ad features a doo-wop quartet singing a cappella. The song was written by Guy Bommarito and produced by Tom Faulkner Productions for GSD&M Advertising of Austin, Texas. Faulkner sings both "I want my baby back, baby back, baby back...", as well as the melodic theme. The deep "Bar-B-Q Sauce" was sung by famed New York bass vocalist, Willie McCoy. Advertising Age magazine named the song first on its list of "10 songs most likely to get stuck in your head" in 2004.[6]

In 2008, the chain aired parody ads for "P. J. Bland's", a fictional restaurant chain with cardboard foods.[7]

In 2013, Chili's used Wendy Rene's Stax single Bar-B-Q in their TV commercial.

International locations

Norman Brinker with Mohamed Abdelnabi Director Of Operation Manager Chili's UAE/OMAN
Chilis,Dallas
Mohamed Abdelnabi,Director Of Operations Chili's UAE/OMAN with Douglas H. Brooks, chairman of Brinker International
Chili's in Hendersonville, Tennessee
Asia Europe Middle East North America / Caribbean Central / South America
India Germany Bahrain Canada Brazil
Indonesia Russia Kuwait Dominican Republic Costa Rica
Japan Egypt Mexico Colombia
Malaysia Lebanon Puerto Rico Ecuador
Philippines United Arab Emirates United States El Salvador
Singapore Oman Guatemala
South Korea Qatar Honduras
Taiwan Jordan Peru
Saudi Arabia Venezuela
Countries where Chili's is found

Legal problems

In October 2008, A Chili's Australia franchise was prosecuted and fined AU$300,000 by the NSW Office of Industrial Relations for underpaying staff, pressuring employees to sign an Australian workplace agreement and failing to pay AU$45,000 in owed wages by a deadline set by the Office of Industrial Relations. In the same year, Chili's announced that it would be closing all of its Australian branches.[8]

On April 2, 2014, Chili's announced [9][10] that it will donate a portion of its checks on April 7, 2014 to the National Autism Association, which claims that vaccinations are a cause of autism.[11][12][13] Chili's reversed itself over the weekend.[14]

References

  1. ↑ Brinker International, Inc. (June 29, 2011). "FY 2011 10-K". U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Retrieved April 17, 2012.
  2. ↑ Brinker International, Inc. (June 29, 2011). "2011 Annual Report to Shareholders". U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Retrieved April 17, 2012.
  3. ↑ Brinker publication (October 2007). "Brinker 2007 Corporate report". Brinker International, Inc. Retrieved 2007-12-19.
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 "Brinker International". Answers.com. Retrieved 2007-12-19.
  5. ↑ "Chili's Restaurant Menu". Brinker International. 2012. Retrieved April 19, 2012.
  6. ↑ "10 Songs most likely to get stuck in your head.(The Book of Tens)". Advertising Age. December 2004. Retrieved 2008-06-24.
  7. ↑ "Chili’s Spoofs Restaurant Ads with ‘P.J. Bland’s’ Campaign". Burger Business. 2009-04-15. Retrieved 2009-04-28.
  8. ↑ "Fast food chain off the boil.". Illawarra Mercury. 2008. Retrieved 2009-10-26.
  9. ↑ Gonzalez, Robert T. (2014-04-05). "Chili's Will Donate 10% of Customers' Checks to Anti-Vaxxers". io9.com. Gawker Media. Retrieved 2014-04-06.
  10. ↑ "How Fixing a "Broken Cheeseburger" Brought Chili's Compassion to Light". mediaroom.com. 2014-04-02. Retrieved 2014-04-06.
  11. ↑ "Causes of Autism". Retrieved 2014-04-06.
  12. ↑ Willingham, Emily (2014-04-05). "Chili's Autism Awareness Problem". forbes.com. Forbes. Retrieved 2014-04-06.
  13. ↑ Rainey, Clint (2014-04-04). "Chili's April Autism Awareness Partnership Draws Sharp Criticism". grubstreet.com. New York (magazine). Retrieved 2014-04-06.
  14. ↑ Smith, Aaron (7 April 2014). "Chili's cancels fundraiser with National Autism Association". cnn.com. CNN. Retrieved 7 April 2014.

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Chili's.