Fast Casual Restaurants

Fast casual restaurants are normally chain restaurants where most of the food is prepared in the restaurant as opposed to fast food restaurants. They would normally not offer table service and be priced somewhere between fast food and casual dining. You might order and pick up your food at the counter in the front of the restaurant.

On this site, you can choose any restaurant by their type, food type,  or by the night kids eat free. You can also search for any restaurant by their name on the right side of the page  More restaurants are being added each day so check back soon if you don’t see one.

The Old Spaghetti Factory

The Old Spaghetti Factory

Sally and Guss (George) Dussin opened their first restaurant, The Old Spaghetti Factory, in Portland, Oregon, on January 10, 1969. They had leased an old warehouse space in the historic Carriage and Baggage building in…

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Blaze Pizza

Blaze Pizza

The idea for Blaze Pizza came to Elise Wetzel one day when she was hungry and in a rush. She stopped at a Blaze Pizza restaurant in Pasadena, CA and as she was watching her…

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Chipotle Mexican Grill

Chipotle Mexican Grill

Steve Ells was born in Indianapolis, Indiana, in 1965 and graduated from the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, New York, in 1990. He subsequently moved to San Francisco and got a job working…

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Schlotzsky’s

Schlotzsky’s

Schlotzsky’s was started by Don and Dolores Dissman in 1971. They should be credited with doing one thing very well. Not many restaurants could pull off a menu with one sandwich but they found a…

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Au Bon Pain

Au Bon Pain

Part one of a three part trilogy. Au Bon Pain (we’ll tackle the pronunciation later) began in France, now resides in Germany with one American businessman in the center.  The story begins in 1976 when…

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Freebirds World Burrito

Freebirds World Burrito

“Born in California. Raised in Texas” is their slogan. Mark Orfalea originally designed the restaurant around the roasted chicken concept similar to El Pollo Loco and wanted to deliver food to the UC Santa Barbara students.…

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Noodles & Company

Noodles & Company

The story of Noodles & Company starts in the trendy Greenwich Village in New York City when a 33-year-old brand manager for Pepsi stopped in Mamie’s Asian Noodle Shop for a bite to eat. Arron Kennedy was…

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Moe’s Southwest Grill

Moe’s Southwest Grill

After graduating from the University of North Carolina, Martin Sprock was only in his late 20’s when he started the popular smoothie chain, Planet Smoothie in 1995. After five successful years of the smoothie business…

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Panda Express

Panda Express

Husband and wife stories are always fun. Andrew is from Yangzhou Province in China, and his wife Peggy grew up in Hong Kong, but they met at Baker University in Kansas. Andrew first went into…

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McAlister’s Deli

McAlister’s Deli

Don Newcomb grew up in the small town of Ridley, Mississippi in the 1950’s. As a boy, he worked at the only soda fountain the small town had. That experience impacted him significantly, and after…

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