Five decades of cheesecake: A history of The Cheesecake Factory 1949 Evelyn Overton bakes one of her New York-style cheesecakes for the employer of her husband, Oscar. The employer requests additional cakes to give as gifts. She rolls the idea into a small-scale bakery operated first from a shop and then from the finished basement of the family's Detroit home. She continued to run the enterprise there for more than 20 years. Son David and daughter Renee earn their childhood allowance by folding pink cardboard cake boxes for 1 cent a box. 1967 David Overton leaves Detroit to attend Hastings College of Law in San Francisco. 1968 David abandons his law studies to be a rock-'n'-roll drummer. Among the groups he will perform with is the Billy Roberts Blues Band, whose leader wrote the Jimi Hendrix hit "Hey, Joe". 1971 David convinces his parents to relocate from Detroit to Los Angeles and open a commercial bakery. The senior Overtons find a 700-square-foot in-line store in North Hollywood. 1972 The Cheesecake Factory wholesale bakery opens with a small retail component. Evelyn bakes the cakes, and Oscar sells them door-to-door to restaurant accounts. David visits from San Francisco occasionally to help out. 1975 The bakery outgrows its quarters and moves to a larger facility in suburban Woodland Hills. David relocates to Los Angeles and joins the business full-time. 1977 Linda Candioty signs on with the bakery to develop its chocolate mousse pie. 1978 The Cheesecake Factory restaurant opens as a 100-seat operation on North Beverly Drive in Beverly Hills, Calif. David Overton's goal is to showcase a model dessert-specialty restaurant for prospective foodservice customers of the wholesale bakery. He convinces Linda to work part-time at the front desk. The restaurant establishes the future chain's pattern of offering an eclectic menu, big portions and signature cheesecakes and turning a previous bank site into a multimillion-dollar-sales performer. 1983 The restaurant expands to a second location in L.A.'s Marina del Rey that seats 250 guests. 1988 Unit No. 3 opens in Redondo Beach, Calif., in a 20,000-square-foot restaurant location. That 450-seat restaurant will remain the chain's largest until the Grand Lux Cafe concept debuts in Las Vegas in 1999. 1991 The chain tests its geographic reach by opening unit No. 5 in Washington, D.C., its first location outside the Los Angeles market. 1992 The Cheesecake Factory Inc. makes its initial public stock offering, consolidating the wholesale bakery and restaurant chain into one corporation. It has an opening share price of $20. 1993 The Cheesecake Factory opens a 446-seat restaurant in Atlanta, its third major metropolitan market. Two more new Southern California locations bring the chain to eight units. 1994 Restaurants in North Bethesda, MD., and Coconut Grove, FL., join the restaurant group. 1995 Customers in Chicago, Houston, Boston and Boca Raton, FL., line up for tables at new Cheesecake Factory restaurants, which total 14 by year-end. The company buys a 3.3-acre parcel in Calabasas Hills, Calif., and builds its current 60,000-square-foot headquarters, which includes a 45,000-square-foot, state-of-the-art production bakery. 1996 The Cheesecake Factory opens three more restaurants, in Illinois, Maryland and Missouri, for a total of 17. 1997 The Cheesecake Factory grows to 23 locations with six more openings. Separately, Host Marriott Services Corp. becomes a licensee to operate the Cheesecake Factory Bakery Cafe. It debuts at a major mall in Ontario, CA. Host will open two more bakery-cafe sites, at Reagan National Airport outside Washington, D.C., and in Norfolk, VA. 1998 Four more restaurants open, and the interactive DisneyQuest recreation center in Orlando, Fla., debuts the Cheesecake Factory Express, a limited-menu fast-food concept. A second Express unit will open at DisneyQuest in Chicago in 1999 before Disney suspends DisneyQuest expansion. 1999 Grand Lux Cafe, the 24-hour restaurant of the Venetian Resort in Las Vegas, debuts as the company's second brand and becomes its largest restaurant. Grand Lux's first-year sales will top $18 million, nearly twice the already monumental per-restaurant average of the company's flagship concept. The Cheesecake Factory's first branch built from the ground up with new construction opens in San Diego, one of six new sites of the flagship brand to open. The company's production bakery in Calabasas Hills makes nearly 6 million cheesecakes during the year and quickly approaches its 10-million unit capacity. 2000 The Cheesecake Factory opens seven restaurants that - at the time - represented the best group of openings for any single year in the company's history. 2000 also saw significant success achieved by the Company's bakery operations with the increase of private label and branded products sold to other wholesalers, retailers and distributors. 2001 The Company achieves the best performance of its history during fiscal 2001, despite a slowing economy and the events of September 11. It completed its fourth 3-for-2 stock split and saw stock price increase approximately 36% during the year. Nine new restaurants are successfully opened - a record. One of those nine new restaurants is the second Grand Lux Cafe, located at Beverly Center in Los Angeles. The Cheesecake Factory Oscar and Evelyn Overton Charitable Foundation is formed. 2002 The Company continues its record-breaking growth by opening 11 new Cheesecake Factory restaurants and its third Grand Lux Cafe, located on Michigan Avenue at Ontario in Chicago. The Cheesecake Factory captures the prestigious Platinum Award from the "Choice in Chains" survey conducted by Restaurants and Institutions magazine. After 25 years of service to the Company, Executive Vice President and Company Secretary Linda Candioty retires. 2003 Records are meant to be broken! The Cheesecake Factory currently plans to open as many as 14 new restaurants during 2003, including its first in Hawaii at Honolulu's Royal Hawaiian Shopping Center. On February 25, the Company celebrates its 25th Anniversary at the original Beverly Hills restaurant. Grand Lux Cafe wins the "Hot Concepts" award from Nation's Restaurant News and Founder David Overton is named "Executive of the Year" by Restaurants and Institutions Magazine.
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