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.

A former Olympic equestrian who competed in the 1952 games, Brinker was born in Colorado and grew up poor on a farm in Roswell, New Mexico. 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.