Golden Corral
 |
|
| Private | |
| Industry | Restaurant |
| Founded | January 3, 1973 Fayetteville, North Carolina, U.S. |
| Founders |
James Maynard William F. Carl |
| Headquarters | Raleigh, North Carolina, U.S. |
|
Number of locations
|
500 (2014) |
|
Key people
|
James H. Maynard, Chairman Lance Trenary, President & CEO Jim Laverty, Sr. V.P. of Finance and Administration Chris Kuehn, CMO |
| Revenue | $195.1 million |
|
Number of employees
|
9000 |
| Website | goldencorral |
Golden Corral is an American family-style restaurant chain serving breakfast, lunch and dinner, featuring a large all-you-can-eat buffet and grill offering numerous hot and cold dishes, a carving station and their Brass Bell Bakery. It is a privately held company headquartered in Raleigh, North Carolina, United States, with locations in forty-one states.
In 1971, James Maynard and William F. Carl conceived the idea that became Golden Corral after several unsuccessful attempts to acquire a franchise with other companies. Golden Corral was incorporated in 1972 and the first Golden Corral Family Steak House opened on January 3, 1973, in Fayetteville, North Carolina.
The company has since expanded to 500 locations across the United States; about 100 of them are company-owned. The others are franchised stores.Gross sales are over $1.53 billion.
The company had more than 500 restaurants by 1987. That year, they decided to begin franchising by licensing 55 distressed restaurants to their most successful general managers. Because of poor training, nationwide concerns about the consumption of red meat, and a shift in market shares to upscale restaurants, sales were falling. The company added salad bars to all of its locations, sacrificed seating in most, and in others sacrificed part of the parking lot to make additions to the buildings.
In 1991, the first seven "Metro Market" concept restaurants opened. They were 10,000 square feet (930 m2) and seated between 400 and 450 customers. These new Golden Corral restaurants more than doubled the size of the old, which were typically 5,000 square feet (460 m2) with a capacity of 175 people. There was the addition of the Brass Bell Bakery, named for the brass bell which rang every fifteen minutes to signal that fresh bread, rolls, and pastries were coming out of the oven. An expanded buffet, dubbed the Golden Choice Buffet, was also added, which had a new layout to showcase its items. The location of these new restaurants, the majority of which were in Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, and North Carolina, was also a change for the company, moving away from small towns and into metropolitan areas. In 2001, system-wide annual sales exceeded $1 billion for the first time. As of 2008, there were 485 restaurants in 41 states. In April 2009, Golden Corral entered New England with a restaurant in Springfield, Massachusetts.
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Wikipedia