page_title: Norman E. Brinker
section_title: Professional
hierarchical_section_title: Norman E. Brinker / Professional
caption_attribution_description: Norman Brinker
context_page_description: Norman Eugene Brinker was an American restaurateur who was responsible for the creation of new business concepts within the restaurant field. He served as president of Jack in the Box, founded Steak and Ale, and helped establish Bennigan's and founded Brinker International. Brinker is sometimes credited with popularizing the salad bar.
context_section_description: After Brinker had graduated from college, he took a job with a small chain of diners in San Diego named Oscar's. At the time, Oscar's owner Bob Peterson had also opened a second chain in the area called Jack in the Box; while Brinker succeeded in his position, he was eventually drawn to Peterson's growing fast-food business. At Jack-in-the-Box, Brinker flourished, helping the business expand across the Southwestern United States. Within two years of moving over to the company, he had been elevated to the position of president of the company and amassed a 20% stake in it. Brinker developed a close professional relationship with Peterson, taking many of his business philosophies to heart and developing the food-service philosophy that he attempted to follow throughout his career. Brinker said of Peterson, "Bob Peterson was really my mentor. Everything we do here today started back then. Letting ideas rise from below, treating people right—all of that."
  When Jack in the Box went public in the early 1960s, Brinker sold his interest in the company and moved to Dallas with the intent to open a new business. His first endeavor was a coffee shop he named after himself, Brinks. The concept was to create a restaurant that catered to the 25- to 44-year-old demographic, a group that was still in the early stages of developing a taste for inexpensive fast food. The shop proved successful, and he sold it two years later. Using the proceeds from the sale, he opened a new chain in 1966 with the intent of providing an affordable steak dinner to the middle class. He called his new concept Steak and Ale.
  With the Steak and Ale chain, Brinker originated the concept of the modern casual dining restaurant that is now ubiquitous in the marketplace. One of the innovations that Brinker introduced with Steak and Ale was the salad bar. Besides the novel concept of having customers leave their tables to serve themselves from a salad buffet, the Dallas-based chain also created the now common stock introduction of "Hi, my name is ______, and I will be your waiter tonight." These ideas were part of an overall plan to establish a restaurant that was more relaxed with a more casual atmosphere. Over the next ten years, he went on to establish a niche industry that was situated between the fast-food and higher-priced gourmet segments of the restaurant field. By 1976, he had taken the chain to 109 restaurants, and had successfully introduced the American consumer to the concept of the chain restaurant. He then sold his company to Pillsbury and assumed a position in the company's restaurant division.
  As a part of the acquisition, Brinker was given the position executive vice president of Pillsbury's restaurant operations, as well as a seat on the company's board of directors. During his tenure as executive VP, Brinker oversaw the creation of the company's Bennigan's chain. Bennigan's was the first in a new concept of restaurants intended to attract single people, a concept that became known as the "fern bar". As his status in Pillsbury grew, Brinker was asked to take over the operations of its main fast-food chain, Burger King.
  By the early 1980s, Burger King's sales had begun to fade. Brinker was asked to turn the brand around and strengthen its position against its main rival, McDonald's. One of his first acts was to initiate an advertising plan emphasizing claims that Burger King's flame-broiled burgers were better and larger than its rival's. The program, arguably the first attack ads on a food chain by a competitor, was controversial in that before it fast-food ads only made allusions to the competition in a vague manner, never mentioning them by name. McDonald's sued Burger King and their ad agency at the time, the J. Walter Thompson Company. Child actress Sarah Michelle Gellar was also implicated in the lawsuit because of her appearance in these television commercials. The suit was settled the following year on undisclosed terms. Despite the controversy, the ad plan boosted same-store sales when sales took off. The whole situation at the time became 
caption: Norman Brinker with Mohamed Abdelnabi, director Of Operation Chili's UAE/OMAN
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