The Cheesecake Factory Incorporated owns and operates restaurants.
The company is culinary forward and relentlessly focused on hospitality. The company owns and operates restaurants throughout the United States and Canada under brands, including The Cheesecake Factory (215 locations), North Italia (43 locations), Flower Child (38 locations) and additional brands within the company’s Fox Restaurant Concepts (‘Other FRC’) portfolio (49 locations). Internationally, 34 The Cheesecake Factory restau...
The Cheesecake Factory Incorporated owns and operates restaurants.
The company is culinary forward and relentlessly focused on hospitality. The company owns and operates restaurants throughout the United States and Canada under brands, including The Cheesecake Factory (215 locations), North Italia (43 locations), Flower Child (38 locations) and additional brands within the company’s Fox Restaurant Concepts (‘Other FRC’) portfolio (49 locations). Internationally, 34 The Cheesecake Factory restaurants operate under licensing agreements. The company’s bakery division operates two facilities that produce quality cheesecakes and other baked products for its restaurants, international licensees and third-party bakery customers.
The Cheesecake Factory
The company operates The Cheesecake Factory restaurants, which strive to provide a distinctive, dining experience by offering an extensive, innovative and evolving menu in an upscale casual, high-energy setting with attentive, efficient and friendly service. As a result, The Cheesecake Factory restaurants appeal to a diverse customer base across a broad demographic range. The company’s extensive menu and strategic selection of locations enable it to compete for substantially all dining preferences and occasions, from the key lunch and dinner day parts to the mid-afternoon and late-night day parts, which are traditionally weaker times for most casual dining restaurants, as well as special occasion dining.
All of the company’s restaurants offer a full-service bar where its entire menu is served. During fiscal 2024, alcoholic beverage sales represented 11% of The Cheesecake Factory restaurant sales. The company offers all items on its menu, except alcoholic beverages where disallowed by regulation, for off-premises consumption, sales of which comprised approximately 21% of The Cheesecake Factory restaurant sales during fiscal 2024. The company works with a third party to provide delivery service from all of its locations and offer online ordering for to-go sales at all of its domestic locations.
The Cheesecake Factory menu features approximately 225 items, exclusive of beverage and dessert items and including items presented on supplemental menus, such as the company’s SkinnyLicious menu that offers innovative items at 590 calories or less. The company’s menu offerings include appetizers, pizza, seafood, steaks, chicken, burgers, small plates, pastas, salads, sandwiches and omelets, including a selection of vegan and gluten-free items.
The company offers approximately 45 varieties of proprietary cheesecake and other desserts in its restaurants. The company’s brand identity and reputation for offering premium desserts results in a significant level of dessert sales, representing approximately 17% of The Cheesecake Factory sales during fiscal 2024.
New Restaurant Site Selection and Development
The Cheesecake Factory concept has demonstrated success in a variety of layouts (e.g., single or multi-level and varying interior square feet), site locations (e.g., urban or suburban shopping malls, lifestyle centers, retail strip centers, office complexes, entertainment centers and urban street locations — either freestanding or in-line) and trade areas. Accordingly, the company intends to continue developing The Cheesecake Factory restaurants in locations that meet its rigorous site standards.
The company has the flexibility in its restaurant designs to penetrate a wide variety of markets across varying population densities in both existing and new markets. The company continues to target company-owned and operated The Cheesecake Factory restaurants domestically over time.
Licensed Locations
The company has licensing agreements with three restaurant operators to develop and operate The Cheesecake Factory brand restaurants in selected international markets.
Consumer Packaged Goods
The Cheesecake Factory brand, it leverages opportunities in the consumer-packaged goods channel by partnering with various third-party manufacturers to offer a variety of products marketed under The Cheesecake Factory At Home mark, including its Famous Brown Bread, which is available in select retail stores nationwide.
North Italia
North Italia is a modern interpretation of Italian cooking in the upscale casual dining segment. North Italia strives to be a modern Italian restaurant with a neighborhood feel, offering classic Italian favorites with a fresh twist made from scratch daily. Contemporary design and decor elements including large dining rooms, high ceilings and open kitchen layouts coupled with a focus on exceptional hospitality and high-quality, personalized service creates a warm, lively atmosphere for guests to create memorable experiences. The menu features a broad selection of delicious, handcrafted dishes including appetizers, salads, fresh pastas, pizzas and entrees, and each restaurant includes unique menu items tailored to local markets. North Italia offers an assortment of wines, beers and house-made cocktails which represented 23% of North Italia sales in fiscal 2024. The company’s North Italia restaurants are generally open seven days a week for lunch, dinner and offer weekend brunch.
The company targets an average North Italia unit size of 6,000 to 7,000 interior square feet.
Flower Child
Flower Child operates in the fast casual dining segment, offering a customizable menu, made fresh from scratch, featuring locally sourced, all-natural and organic ingredients. Flower Child provides the company an opportunity to diversify its portfolio in a strong and growing niche. The company operates various Flower Child approximately 20% average annual unit growth for this concept. The company targets an average Flower Child unit size of 3,000 to 4,000 interior square feet.
Fox Restaurant Concepts (FRC)
FRC operates as an independent subsidiary based in Phoenix, Arizona and serves as an incubator, innovating new food, dining and hospitality experiences to create fresh, exciting concepts. With over a dozen evolving restaurant brands launched to-date, its concepts are diverse in industry segment, occasions, square footage and geography. Other FRC potential growth concepts include Culinary Dropout, The Henry and Blanco, which together with the other FRC brands, serve as an ecosystem for talent, menu and design development. The company operates Other FRC locations. The company targets approximately 10% to 15% average annual unit growth for the aggregate Other FRC portfolio, complemented by additional market tests of the potential growth concepts. The company targets an average FRC unit size of 3,500 to 15,000 interior square feet.
Bakery Operations
The company owns and operates two bakery production facilities, one in Calabasas Hills, California, and one in Rocky Mount, North Carolina. The company’s facility in California accommodates both production operations and corporate support personnel, while its facility in North Carolina houses production operations and a distribution center. The company is evaluating beginning construction on a third bakery production facility in Charlestown, Indiana in fiscal 2025 or fiscal 2026. The company produces approximately 60 varieties of proprietary cheesecakes and other baked desserts using high-quality ingredients for The Cheesecake Factory restaurants and for international licensees and third-party customers.
The primary role of the company’s bakery operations is to produce innovative, high-quality cheesecakes and other baked desserts for sale at its restaurants and those of its international licensees. The company also leverages The Cheesecake Factory brand identity and utilizes its bakery production capacity by selling cheesecakes and other baked products to external foodservice operators, retailers and distributors. Current large-account customers include retail and supermarkets, foodservice distributors and operators, a national retail bookstore, other restaurants and national warehouse clubs. Items produced for outside accounts are marketed under The Cheesecake Factory At Home and The Cheesecake Factory Bakery marks, as well as private labels.
The company sells baked goods internationally in approximately 15 countries under The Cheesecake Factory At Home mark. Offering its cheesecakes and other baked desserts internationally is important to the company’s branding, creating awareness and driving demand for both its bakery products, and the international expansion of the company’s restaurants.
Marketing and Advertising
The Cheesecake Factory
The company relies on its reputation, as well as its profile locations, media exposure and positive word of mouth to maintain and grow market share. The company utilizes a social media and digital marketing strategy that allows it to engage regularly with its customers outside of its restaurants, including communication and paid advertising on social media platforms such as Instagram and Facebook, influencer marketing, Google advertising and direct email to customers. The company launched its Cheesecake Rewards program nationally in mid-2023 with the objective to leverage data analytics and insights to engage more effectively with its guests, and drive incremental sales while maintaining the company’s restaurant level margins.
Public relations is another important aspect of the company’s marketing approach, and it frequently appear on local and national television in connection with a variety of promotional opportunities, such as National Cheesecake Day, to perform cooking demonstrations and other brand-building exposure. In addition, the company works with several premiere third-party gift card distributors contributing to its brand awareness and gift card sales, as well as its consumer-packaged goods licensees on co-branded marketing campaigns.
North Italia, Flower Child and Other FRC
North Italia, Flower Child and Other FRC execute localized marketing programs focused on awareness, frequency and brand engagement through a variety of channels, including store-level marketing, public relations, in-store events, digital advertising, email programs and social media. Each restaurant is positioned as an individual brand with a neighborhood connection. Additionally, the restaurant interiors and exteriors are utilized for brand engagement and messaging through art and graphics, creating an important part of a brand experience for the customer.
Trade Names, Trademarks and Other Intellectual Property
The company owns and has applied to register trade names, logos, service marks, trademarks, copyrights and other intellectual property (collectively, ‘Intellectual Property’) in the United States, Canada and in additional countries throughout the world in various categories, including without limitation, restaurant services and bakery goods. The company regards its Intellectual Property, including ‘The Cheesecake Factory,’ ‘North Italia,’ and a collection with the Fox Restaurant Concepts subsidiary, as well as the company’s trade dress, as having substantial value and as being important to the company’s marketing efforts. The company has also registered various internet domain names, including ‘www.thecheesecakefactory.com,’ ‘www.northitalia.com’, and ‘www.foxrc.com’.
Government Laws and Regulations
The company is also subject to various environmental regulations governing areas such as water usage, sanitation disposal, and transportation mitigation.
The company is also subject to the regulations of the Department of Homeland Security, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and U.S. Immigration, and Customs Enforcement.
The company’s facilities must comply with applicable requirements of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (‘ADA’) and related federal, state and foreign laws and regulations which prohibit discrimination on the basis of disability with respect to public accommodations, and employment.
History
The Cheesecake Factory Incorporated was founded by Oscar and Evelyn Overton in 1972. The company was incorporated in 1992 in Delaware.