Stuart Anderson (restaurateur)

Anderson was born in Tacoma, Washington, and raised in Seattle in well-to-do circumstances. His father was a successful orthopedic surgeon during the Great Depression. Anderson would joke that his difficult circumstances included having to walk all the way across the Broadmoor golf course to school.[1] He left Seattle to join the United States Army during World War II, driving tanks in General George S. Patton's Third Army,[2] and returned to Seattle in 1949.[3][1]

In Seattle after the war, Anderson bought a hotel, The Caledonia, in order to circumvent the state's blue laws and sell alcohol in the hotel bar which he called the Ringside Room.[1] Anderson would later say in his book Here's the Beef! My Story of Beef that "Hookers, seamen, hustlers and wrestlers made up most of my trade."[4] Around 1960,[5] he opened a restaurant there and called it The French Quarter. In 1962, it was remade with a Klondike Gold Rush theme for the 1962 World's Fair and renamed to The Gold Coast.[6] Finally in 1964 it was renamed again to Stuart Anderson's Black Angus before moving to Seattle's Elliott Avenue in the Denny Triangle.[7]

Eventually Black Angus became a chain with over 100 restaurants which Anderson sold in 1972.[2]

Anderson's 2,600-acre (1,100 ha) ranch in Thorp could be seen from Interstate 90, and was featured in commercials.[8]

Anderson came out of retirement in Rancho Mirage, California to re-open a struggling Black Angus restaurant under the name Stuart's Steakhouse in 2010. It closed in 2012.[5][9] He died from lung cancer at his home in Rancho Mirage on June 6, 2016, at the age of 93.[4][9]

Anderson and his restaurants are credited with launching the western-theme restaurant concept (Ponderosa Steakhouse and Bonanza Steakhouse, Texas Roadhouse) and the careers of other successful restaurant businesspeople like Julia Stewart, DineEquity CEO.[2]

His wife Helen said that despite his success in business, he could not cook steak, and "the best he could do would be peanut butter sandwiches or frying eggs".[4]

Anderson was inducted to the Ellensburg Rodeo Hall of Fame[10] in 2008 for his support.[8]

Anderson wrote two books about his life in the restaurant business. The second, Corporate Cowboy Stuart Anderson: How a Maverick Entrepreneur Built Black Angus, America’s #1 Restaurant Chain of the 1980s, was written in 2014 shortly before his death.[11]

• Anderson, Stuart (1997). Here’s the Beef! My Story of Beef. Seattle, Washington: Hara. ISBN 1883697948.
• Anderson, Stuart (2014). Corporate Cowboy Stuart Anderson: How a Maverick Entrepreneur Built Black Angus, America’s #1 Restaurant Chain of the 1980s. San Bernardino, California: Stuart Anderson. ISBN 0692200630.

Anderson was married to Helen Anderson, née Fisher, from North Dakota.[12]