Ruth’s Chris Steak House Inc.Chief Executive Craig Miller said on Monday he sees franchising as the key to helping the upscale restaurant chain open more than 100 restaurants internationally.
“When you license or franchise, you are not putting your own human capital or financial capital at risk,” Miller said at the Reuters Food Summit in Chicago. “It’s a way of taking advantage of where the window is in the marketplace.”
That window, Miller said, could take Ruth’s Chris steaks to Central America, the Middle East and East Asia in the next few years.
Ruth’s Chris recently signed a five-unit franchise deal with restaurateurs in Costa Rica, Panama and the Dominican Republic, and is in talks to open franchises in the Middle East, China and Japan, he said.
Ruth’s Chris, which abandoned its New Orleans headquarters for Heathrow, Florida, in the wake of the devastation left by Hurricane Katrina, plans to keep its menu — featuring prime U.S. beef — essentially intact overseas, Miller said.
The company’s expansion plans won’t be deterred by risk factors like bird flu and SARS, both of which hampered its Hong Kong and Taiwan locations in recent years, Miller added.
“It was a little bit like the 9/11 incident, this issue parachuting in on you,” Miller said. “All that can have an impact on consumer demand … I don’t lose a lot of sleep over that because, to be honest with you, there’s not a lot we can do about it.
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