History
The company was founded in August 1987 as Multi-Venture Partners, Inc. in Florida by Tim Gannon, Bob Basham, and Chris Sullivan. In 1988 the first Outback Steakhouse was opened in Tampa, Florida. The company went public in 1991 as a 49-restaurant chain and changed its name to Outback Steakhouse, Inc. The Carrabba's Italian Grill was launched in 1993. The companies international expansion began with the first Outback steakhouse to open in Canada. Revenues for the company exceed $1 billion for the first time. In 1997 the first units of Roy's Restaurant, Flemming's Prime Steakhouse and Wine Bar, and Lee Roy Selmon's open. Cheeseburger in Paradise is launched several years later in 2002. The Wall Street Journal reported on November 7, 2006 that Bain Capital, Catterton Partners and founders Sullivan, Basham, and Gannon (collectively referred to as Kangaroo Holdings, Inc.), had reached an agreement to buy OSI Restaurant Partners Inc. for about $3 billion.
Read more about this topic: OSI Restaurant Partners
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“We don’t know when our name came into being or how some distant ancestor acquired it. We don’t understand our name at all, we don’t know its history and yet we bear it with exalted fidelity, we merge with it, we like it, we are ridiculously proud of it as if we had thought it up ourselves in a moment of brilliant inspiration.”
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“... that there is no other way,
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—John Ashbery (b. 1927)