Fuddrucker's
 |
|
| Subsidiary | |
| Industry | Restaurants |
| Genre | Fast casual |
| Founded | 1979 (as Freddie Fuddruckers) |
| Founder | Philip J. Romano |
| Headquarters | Houston, Texas, U.S. |
|
Number of locations
|
223 (2015) |
|
Area served
|
Americas Europe Middle East |
|
Key people
|
Peter Large (CEO) |
| Products | Grilled hamburgers |
| Revenue | $148.8 million |
| Parent | Luby's |
| Website | www |
Fuddruckers is an American fast casual, franchised restaurant chain that specializes in hamburgers. The Fuddruckers concept is to offer large hamburgers in which the meat is ground on-site and buns are baked on the premises. As of 2015, Fuddruckers had 77 company-operated restaurants and 111 franchises across the United States and around the world. The company headquarters is in Houston, Texas.
Fuddruckers was founded as Freddie Fuddruckers in 1979 by Philip J. Romano in San Antonio, Texas, in a location converted to a restaurant from an old bank. He started the chain because he thought that "the world needed a better hamburger." The Fuddruckers concept was to offer large hamburgers in which the meat was ground on-site and buns were baked on the premises and hamburgers and other dishes were offered with "lots of fresh sliced tomatoes, onions, lettuce and vats of cheese sauce." In California, Fuddruckers competed at the high end of the fast food market against chains such as Flakey Jake's, sometimes with head-to-head competitions in places such as Northridge, California. By 1988, there were 150 restaurants in the chain, according to a report in The New York Times. Romano left the chain in 1988 to found Romano's Macaroni Grill. In an interview, Romano stated that "I just felt I had done all I could for the concept."
Fuddruckers was purchased in November 1998 by Michael Cannon, and later it was purchased by Magic Brands. The restaurant sometimes made controversial decisions; for example, in 2010 it began enforcing a no-weapons policy, which insisted that patrons should not carry "visible pistols" unless they were security officials. Laws in some U.S. states allow people to carry guns visibly in public. Fuddruckers management had been concerned that the presence of armed patrons might deter unarmed ones from visiting, but the move caused controversy among pro-gun advocates who threatened to retaliate with boycotts of Fuddruckers restaurants.
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Wikipedia