Texas Roadhouse is a chain of American steakhouse restaurants specialising in Texan and Southwestern cuisine-style steaks. It is a subsidiary of Texas Roadhouse Inc., which owns two other restaurant concepts, Bubba’s 33 and Jaggers, and is headquartered in Louisville, Kentucky.
As of August 2021, the chain operates approximately 627 locations in 49 states within the US and 29 international locations in 10 countries.
Founded on February 17, 1993, Texas Roadhouse’s first restaurant opened in the Green Tree Mall in Clarksville, Indiana, across the Ohio River from Louisville, Kentucky. The founder, W. Kent Taylor, a native of Louisville, had previously lived in Colorado and worked at various nightclubs and restaurants there.
In 1990, Taylor moved back to Louisville and started working as a manager at Kentucky Fried Chicken. He had a dream of opening a Colorado-themed restaurant, and with the help of former Kentucky Governor John Y. Brown Jr., who invested $80,000, that dream became a reality.
In 1991, Taylor opened Buckhead Mountain Grill, where he worked as the executive chef. Brown later invested more money to open a second restaurant in Clarksville, but the partnership encountered difficulties, and the plan fell through.