Struggling Young Mom Began Restaurant Chain

The Indianapolis Star:

Ruth’s Chris Steak House got its start in New Orleans, led by Ruth Ann Udstad Fertel.

It was 1958 when Fertel’s husband delivered a bombshell. He told her he was leaving.

To support her two sons, she took a position as a lab technician at Tulane University Medical School making about $10,000 a year. By 1965, she was struggling to support her family.

As she searched through ads in the newspaper, she saw one that said “Chris Steak House for sale.” She mortgaged her house to purchase the little restaurant on the corner of Broad and Ursuline in New Orleans for $18,000.

Fertel tended bar, swept the floors, cut the steak and cooked. The restaurant became famous in New Orleans. After a kitchen fire destroyed the original restaurant in 1976, Fertel moved to a new location but no longer was allowed legally to use the same name. So she got a ladder and a paint can and wrote Ruth’s in front of Chris Steakhouse.

After years of failed attempts, Tom Moran, a regular customer and business owner, persuaded a hesitant Fertel to let him open the first Ruth’s Chris franchise in Baton Rouge in 1976.

Fertel reluctantly began awarding more and more franchises. In time, her Ruth’s Chris franchisees became part of her extended family.

In the 1980s, the little corner steakhouse grew into a global phenomenon with restaurants opening every year in cities around the nation and the world, including Hong Kong.

Logo from Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse.