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Yard House: Hundreds of Taps, $65M in Sales
Steele Platt opened his first restaurant in Denver in 1985 at age 25. Its failure was the best thing to happen to him.
"You need that first lesson about what went wrong to do it right the next time," Platt said.
For Platt, the next time came in 1995, when he launched the Yard House restaurant and bar in an abandoned waterfront building in Long Beach.
With little money, Platt said he talked his way into a favorable lease and upgrades to the building. From there, he won over investors who bought into the idea of a restaurant built around food, beer and rock 'n' roll.
The Yard House did $3.2 million in revenue in its first year. Now Yard House Restaurants LLC counts $65 million in yearly revenue, nine restaurants and 1,900 workers.
Platt was among the honorees at last week's Excellence in Entrepreneurship Awards luncheon...