The Cheesecake Factory

At least part of the Cheesecake Factory's winning concept seems simple enough: Each restaurant features its own stylish architecture, while the same relentlessly comprehensive menu is offered throughout the chain. Portions are plentiful; prices, mostly moderate.

Today it is a publicly traded company, but Cheesecake Factory Inc. sprang from humble roots. In the 1940s, Evelyn Overton opened a small cheesecake shop in Detroit, which she would later move to her basement kitchen to save money. From home base she continued to supply local restaurants with her desserts. A calling westward in 1972 brought Evelyn and her husband, Oscar Overton, to Los Angeles. Oscar built accounts and sold the cakes; Evelyn ran the bakery and minded the office.
* * *      Evelyn's expanding list of cheesecake recipes was a hit, sales blossomed and a new bakery was needed to fill wholesale orders from Santa Barbara to San Diego. Emboldened by the profitable wholesale business, in 1978 the Overtons founded their first full-service Cheesecake Factory restaurant in Beverly Hills. An entrepreneurial prodigy was born, which now stretches to the East Coast and continues to thrive despite Evelyn's death in 1996.
     With its gargantuan menu, "Everyone can find something to eat at The Cheesecake Factory," says Heather Coin, general manager of the Thousand Oaks restaurant. The plastic-embossed full-color menu is bound with rings, notebook-style. There are almost 20 pages to pore over, and offerings include espresso and blended drinks of all sorts, appetizers, pizzas, pastas, salads, seafood, steaks, sandwiches and desserts. There is also a page for brunch-style fare, which is served from 10 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. Sundays.
     As for the cheesecakes, there are about 35 variations, all of which are prepared at the company's bakery in Calabasas and trucked in daily. The "something for everyone" Cheesecake Factory mentality even applies to attire.
     "It's California casual," Coin says. "You can come in your beach shorts and flip-flops. Or you can deck yourself out." -- Rodney Bosch