The steakhouse dining experience in the United States had become quite standardized before Fogo de Chão arrived in 1997 to offer something truly new and unique. A Brazilian steakhouse serving steakhouse favorites in the churrasco style, the South American chain expanded into the U.S. with its boisterous format of servers wandering around dining rooms bearing essentially swords laden with big chunks of various flame-grilled meats, presented to customers in an all-you-can-eat style. By 2015, Fogo de Chão was a chain of 37 restaurants and it raised $88 million in an initial public offering of its stock. Most of that money was used by the company to eliminate debt and open new locations. Just three years later, with only one more restaurant opened, Rhone Capital purchased Fogo de Chão outright for $650 million. In 2021, the 60-location restaurant went public once more, seeking funds to pay down the $344.2 million in debt accrued over the years, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic. Business dropped off considerably during virus-stopping lockdowns; Fogo de Chão was about the experience of in-person dining.
But after adopting takeout and offering catering services, the trajectory shifted to upward for Fogo de Chão. Revenues improved by late 2020, and Bain Capital bought the business for $1.1 billion in 2023. Following several new openings in 2023, the chain will launch as many as 20 new locations over the next few years.
The longest-lasting element of fascination with Australia that gripped the U.S. after the 1986 success of the movie “Crocodile Dundee,” Outback Steakhouse was once the pre-eminent and inescapable suburban sit-down restaurant. Adopting an Australian theme, but not really its cuisine, it sold and still sells large portions of competitively priced and populist fare like steaks, cheesy chicken, seafood, and salads, all promoted with the memorable slogan, “No rules, just right.” In 2011, Outback Steakhouse peaked in terms of real estate, operating 775 restaurants in the United States alone. In the 2020s, Outback Steakhouse experienced a consistent decline in sales. By 2022, the network had decreased to 694 restaurants, which all survived the COVID-19 pandemic era mostly intact. Still, older locations, those established in the 1990s and 2000s, underwhelmed the corporate office with their sales figures, went on the chopping block, and in February 2024, parent company Bloomin’ Brands shut down 33 Outback Steakhouses.
Bloomin’ Brands aims to keep Outback relevant and profitable through expansion, albeit with some changes. Many Outback Steakhouses may be relocated within their markets, while executives see opportunities for growth in pinpointed underserved areas like Texas and Florida. Any new Outbacks opening in the next few years will be from a new design — the restaurants are smaller than the extant outlets by 16% with an updated interior design and dedicated areas to make takeout more efficient. The new ones even save the company 20% in construction costs.
As recently as the 1960s, there was really only one kind of steakhouse in the United States: the fancy and expensive variety patronized by middle-class Americans only on special occasions. Steak and Ale brought steakhouse dining to the masses and at a more reasonable price point. The Old English-style restaurants brought a lot of innovations to dining out, including a salad bar, free soda refills, a lower-cost lunch menu, and affordable steaks. One of the most popular restaurants across the country for two decades thanks to an aggressive expansion by Pillsbury’s restaurant division, about 300 outlets were operational by the mid-1980s. Steak and Ale sealed its own fate. By helping to create the concept of casual dining, it invited lots of competitors, which slowly but massively encroached on its bottom line. In 2008, then-owners Metromedia Restaurant Group filed for bankruptcy. By that point, the 58 Steak and Ale restaurants still open were shut down immediately.
Nearly two decades after its slow death seemed final, Steak and Ale is poised to return. Legendary Restaurant Brands, owner of the Steak and Ale trademarks, also controls Bennigan’s and enjoyed some success when it revived a few Steak and Ale menu items. Five years later, franchisee Roy Arnold signed the papers to launch 15 new standalone Steak and Ale outlets, and the first opened in suburban Minneapolis in 2024.
After devising the innovative and casual TGI Friday’s restaurant, Alan Stillman embraced upscale, traditional themes and launched the Smith & Wollensky’s steakhouse in New York City in 1977. With a menu that included American Wagyu, dry-aged U.S.D.A. and prime steaks, the concept had grown into a chain of eight restaurants in large and monied U.S. cities by 2016, and all but the flagship were acquired by a private equity firm. In 2020, COVID-19 lockdown and transmission-preventing measures led to the closure of the entire chain for several months, and when it opened back up, it was with social distancing measures and reduced hours. That derailed the company’s projected earnings for 2020 by as much as 60%.
The small chain weathered COVID-era setbacks, and by 2024 it was focused on growth in both the U.S. and abroad. New Smith & Wollensky’s restaurants opened in Taiwan and South Korea, with plans for more locations in Japan and a re-opening of a long-since shut-down steakhouse in Columbus, Ohio.
An elegant, clean, and modern take on the venerable restaurant format, Ruth’s Chris Steak House is an upscale chain where the portions are big, the quality is high, and the checks are eye-popping. Originating as a single Chris Steak House in New Orleans in 1927, Ruth Fertel bought the business in 1965 and started expanding it and increasing its visibility. In 2023, there were 154 Ruth’s Chris Steak Houses in operation around the world, with just over half of those company-owned. That’s when Olive Garden and LongHorn Steakhouse parent company Darden Restaurants acquired the chain, right when it was emerging from multiple crises. During the pandemic, 23 Ruth’s Chris locations shut down, leading to mass temporary layoffs and executives foregoing salaries.
After about a year of tentatively serving customers, Ruth’s Chris reversed the slide, and the injection of cash from Darden helped it move into the future. Not long after closing restaurants, new Ruth’s Chris locations are in the works. A brand new facility opened in Pennsylvania in March 2025.
The first Black Angus Steakhouse, named for a breed of prized beef cattle, opened in Seattle in 1964. Once named Stuart Anderson’s Black Angus after its founding restaurateur, the steakhouse was a more casual place, offering a sit-down restaurant experience for families with unbeatable prices. In the early days, patrons could purchase a complete steak dinner, including meat, potato, and a starter course, for about $3. After Anderson sold the growing chain but remained an executive, Black Angus boasted 100 outlets, mostly in the western U.S., by the late 1980s. In the new century, Black Angus faltered. In 2004, the restaurant faced bankruptcy and changed up its menu and allowed takeout. The tweaks didn’t work, and in 2009, controlling owner ARG Enterprises, facing $500 million worth of debt, filed for bankruptcy protection. At that point, the chain was down to 69 locations, which dwindled to 34 by the end of the COVID-overshadowed 2020. Half of all Black Angus locations temporarily closed down, with 31 holding on.
That core of solid performers restaurants is where Deborah Shapiro, vice president of growth for Black Angus, wants to focus efforts. The restaurants enjoyed an interior makeover, are open later into the night, and are serving more fixed price multi-course dinners, bargain platters, entrees that pair with wine and high-end spirits, and retro-oriented cowboy theme nights. “It’s been steadily bringing in more counts each week,” Shapiro told FSR. “People are coming to expect it.”
Surprisingly founded in Clarksville, Indiana, in 1993, Texas Roadhouse offers customers an idealized sample of the Texas culinary lifestyle, selling a menu full of steaks, ribs, and chili. With the feel of a casual family-style chain restaurant, Texas Roadhouse’s commitment to food is akin to that of a top-shelf steakhouse, as almost everything is made on the premises. Adjustments and challenges brought on by the coronavirus pandemic in 2020 left Texas Roadhouse hurting. By the fourth quarter of the year, the chain’s net income had fallen by $19.5 million against 2019, with same-location sales dropping by about 10%. In the early days of COVID-related lockdowns, Texas Roadhouse CEO Kent Taylor sprang into action to at least save the livelihoods of his employees, donating his salary and bonuses, a sum of multiple millions of dollars, to hourly workers. He also earmarked $5 million of his own money to Andy’s Outreach, a Texas Roadhouse-affiliated charity that aids financially struggling employees of the chain.
In the customer-facing front, Texas Roadhouse aggressively instituted and promoted takeout options, increasing its volume in that area by more than double. In 2024, Texas Roadhouse was out of the fall. In the third quarter, it enjoyed a revenue increase of 13.5% and a net income rise of 32.3%. The chain opened 30 new spots in 2024, and in 2025, it’s set to open another 30 restaurants.
STK Steakhouse isn’t a strip-mall, populist steakhouse. Operated by The One Group Hospitality, it’s a throwback to the elegant, expensive, and exacting big city steakhouses of mid-century America. The moderately sized chain specializes in premium, classic steakhouse items like aged steaks, large filets, oysters, and crab cakes.
Once the COVID-19 pandemic arrived in the early months of 2020, triggering shutdown orders across the United States and almost entirely preventing people from dining out, STK Steakhouse struggled. Revenues fell by double digits — as much as about 80% in some cases — in all four quarters of 2020 in both corporate owned and licensed STK Steakhouse locations. Coupled with COVID-era supply chain and labor issues, STK Steakhouse looked to be in serious financial trouble. But when restaurants started opening back up again, and cooped-up and deprived diners that craved eating out and social experiences could make it out, they filled STK’s two dozen locations. In 2022, the chain reported its most robust growth ever. By 2024, it was even growing the business, expanding to 30 restaurants and counting, and preparing to open a seafood-centric spinoff chain.
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