Steakhouse Chains: The Early Years

Although forerunners certainly existed—most famously Lawrence Frank’s Lawry’s Prime Rib, which opened in Los Angeles in 1938—the first major expansion of mass-market steakhouse chains took place during the late 1950s. Such growth might have been expected, as that era marked a boom in the limited-menu, franchise-owned, and mass-marketed restaurant format. At the same time, making steak fit into this new type of format proved challenging, if for no other reason than the economic realities of steak production did not meet the institutional necessities of franchised chains that specialized in low-cost foods.