Developer Of Chili's Restaurant Chain Brinker Dies

ANABELLE GARAY

DALLAS (AP) — Norman Brinker, a restaurant mogul who popularized the salad bar and built a worldwide casual dining empire that includes Chili's Grill & Bar, died Tuesday at age 78.

Brinker died at a hospital in Colorado, said Robin Rymer at Swan-Law Funeral Home in Colorado Springs. He suffered complications related to pneumonia while on vacation, Brinker International Inc. spokeswoman Stacey Sullivan said.

Before retiring as chairman of Dallas-based Brinker International in 2000, he had built the chain of more than 1,000 casual-dining restaurants. The company now has 1,700 restaurants in 27 countries, according to its Web site.

While Brinker wasn't necessarily a household name, he had a high profile in Dallas and Americans have enjoyed his eatery concepts that fit somewhere between fast food and fine dining.

"My goal is to wipe out dining room lights across the country," he told The Associated Press in a story published in 1996.

A former Olympic equestrian who competed in the 1952 games, Brinker was born in Colorado and grew up poor on a farm in Roswell, N.M. He moved to Dallas in the 1960s and started a coffee shop before developing the concept for Steak & Ale restaurants — a chain he established in the mid-1960s where he's credited with popularizing the salad bar and casual dining.