How many ruths chris are there

With her love for people, pride in her community and her knack for creating memorable moments, Ruth redefined the steak house category. Here are some key stats about our legendary brand:. What sets us apart from other restaurants in the industry is our premier steak house brand led by dedicated people delivering delightful dining experiences. We are known for serving high-quality food coupled with high-touch hospitality.

Our team-based approach allows us to provide world-class dining experiences tending to every detail from the moment a guest arrives to the moment they leave. Our restaurants are well recognized, with multiple Consumer Pick's awards from Nation's Restaurant News, including our most recent as No. A proven, differentiated business model with a history of success, our comprehensive business strategy focuses on delivering a total return to shareholders by maintaining a healthy core, growing with disciplined investments and returning excess capital to shareholders.

Our people, food and atmosphere are the anchors of our healthy core business. Beyond the backlash, the history of Ruth's Chris Steak House is as colorful and eccentric as the city in which it was born, yet there's still much that even repeat customers may not know about the venerable restaurant franchise.

Read on to discover the untold truth of Ruth's Chris Steak House. According to her New York Times obituary, Ruth Fertel was a divorced single mother working as a lab technician at Tulane School of Medicine in New Orleans when she became interested in buying a local restaurant specializing in steaks.

Despite her lack of restaurant savvy, her new venture became an immediate success thanks to Fertel's determination. We spoiled them," Fertel said in an interview , offering an example of the kind of service customers could expect. When Ruth Fertel's Chris Steak House burned down in , she quickly scrambled to open in a new, larger location.

That presented a problem, in that her original purchase agreement with previous owner Chris Matulich specified that she could only use the name of the restaurant — which had been been unchanged since — at the original location. As Fertel's son, Randy Fertel, wrote in his memoir , she simply tacked her name onto the front of the original moniker, resulting in the unwieldy Ruth's Chris Steak House.

The reason, he wrote, was because "she had grown to hate being called Chris, or, worse, being taken for Chris's wife. Even though it was Ruth Fertel who came up with the name, she admitted to Fortune in that she wasn't particularly fond of it.

Within six months, she had raked in more than twice her annual Tulane salary. As the restaurant's reputation grew, so did its clientele. When one of the eatery's most loyal customers moved from New Orleans to Baton Rouge, he'd return to the city just to get a steak at his favorite restaurant. In , he talked Fertel into opening a Ruth's Chris franchise in his neck of the woods so he'd be able to enjoy her steaks without having to make the drive. Our name recognition spread.

In fact, all our franchisees were people who had eaten at one time or another in one of our restaurants. We never looked for franchisees. They came to us. When staffing her restaurant, Ruth Fertel bucked tradition and hired other single mothers as her wait staff.

According to the Ruth's Chris Steak House website , Fertel and her team were nicknamed the "Broads on Broad Street," referring to the restaurant's original location. You are making a reservation for 2 people at Ruth's Chris Steak House. Special requests are not guaranteed and are subject to availability and restaurant discretion.

Notes stating an alternative timing or party-size will not be accommodated. For parties 8 or more, please contact the restaurant directly. Sign Up now to earn Chope-Dollars! Non-members click here to use your confirmation code to manage your booking.

Sign Up or Login. For Restaurants Get your restaurant listed on our platforms and connect to more diners. Stories Discover the latest food news and reviews around town. He spent the rest of his life trying to make the zoo a more spacious and inviting environment for the animals but refused to pay for his sons' college tuition. One day she saw an ad in the classifieds for an unnamed restaurant for sale. She matched the phone number on the ad to the phone number listed in the Yellow Pages for Chris Steak House.

She saw that the restaurant had been founded on her birthday , February 2, With no experience working in a restaurant, Fertel decided to buy the steakhouse. She didn't know that the owner of Chris Steak House, Chris Matulich, had previously sold the restaurant six times and bought it back at a steep discount after the new owners failed to turn a profit.

Although Matulich promised to train Fertel, he disappeared after the sale with all the cash in the register. She butchered each of the steaks herself, cutting through the bone with a hacksaw. She'd collapse on a mattress in the back after butchering each pound loin. A week after opening, she invested in an electric saw. Four months after she bought the restaurant, Hurricane Betsy hit New Orleans, causing massive damage and knocking out the electric grid. Instead of letting the high-quality steaks in her refrigerators spoil, she cooked them in gas broilers and gave them out free to relief workers and hurricane victims.

Afterward, many of those people became regular customers. For 10 years, Ruth ran Chris Steak House as a stand-alone restaurant. She preferred to employ single mothers like herself because she believed they were reliable and hard workers. Chris Steak House was the only restaurant in New Orleans with an all-female waitstaff. Under her leadership, Chris Steak House flourished.