Who We Are

A restaurant company built one partnership at a time

Lettuce Entertain You opened its doors on June 10, 1971, when Rich Melman’s appetite for new restaurant ideas met the business instincts of Jerry A. Orzoff, a successful realtor who became Melman’s closest friend and mentor. Their first place, R.J. Grunts, took a few months to find its audience and then became one of the busiest rooms in Chicago. The two kept building concepts together until Orzoff’s death in 1981, and out of that friendship came the way we still operate: share the work, share the ideas, grow together, and put caring first.

More than five decades on, we remain family-owned. Today the company owns, operates and licenses over 60 brands and more than 130 restaurants across a dozen states, among them Illinois, Minnesota, Maryland, Nevada, Virginia, Texas, Florida and Washington, D.C. The range runs from counter-service spots to Michelin-starred dining rooms and that range is exactly what makes room for our teams to keep moving up.