The time-line of Outback Steakhouse
Outback Steakhouse is an Australian-based American casual dining restaurant chain. It is based in Tampa, Florida. It is spread across 23 countries throughout North and South America, Asia and Australia. Founded in 1988 by Bob Basham, Chris T Sullivan, Trudy Cooper, Tim Gannon, it has restaurants at almost 1000 locations.
Since its opening, it has gone through several milestones making it one of the popular steakhouse across the United States and other countries
Let us have look at their timeline
Early 1990’s Expanding as a public company
The number of Outback restaurants continued to expand.
Mid 1990’s Addition of Carrabba’s and another concept in the Menu
With the addition of Carrabba’s and other concepts, Outback Steakhouse expanded internationally. They entered into a joint venture with a Houston restaurant group and developed Carrabba’s Italian Grill restaurants. It featured Italian cuisine in a casual setting.
Outback continued its steady expansion in 1994 and opened 70 new Outback Steakhouses and 10 new Carrabba’s Italian Grill casual diners. By the end of 1995, there was a total of 300 Outback Steakhouses and 25 Carrabba’s Italian Grill casual diners. The revenues at the end of the year 1995 had reached $665
Million, making it more than double when compared to earlier 2 years.
Late 1990’s – Crossing the $1 billion revenue mark
The international expansion of the Outback Steakhouse concept began somewhere around 1996 with its first unit opening internationally in Canada. Over the next few years, Outback Steakhouse restaurants were opened across Aruba, Brazil, China, Guam, Mexico, and South Korea. By the end of the decade, there were at least 40 Outback Steakhouses opened outside the United States.
The steady growth of Outback Steakhouses continued beyond 2000, as the franchise was purely focusing on international expansion. They developed and went ahead with additional restaurant concepts, experimenting with smaller versions to its flagship chain, located in alternative locations such as airports. The Outback Steakhouse went past $1 billion revenue mark by the end of the millennium.
