David Overton

Birth date: April 13, 1946, born in Detroit, Hometown:; has lived in California since 1967

Education: degrees in economics and history from Wayne State University, Detroit Personal: married to his wife, Sheila, with three sons aged 33, 25 and 23 none of whom is in the family business Hobbies: music, food and wine, luxury living, nice hotels and studying philosophy and religion, Title: founder, chairman and chief executive, Company: The Cheesecake Factory Inc., Calabasas Hills, Calif.

David Overton is having a good year. He just opened his 92nd Cheesecake Factory restaurant and his fifth Grand Lux Cafe the brand’s slightly more upscale younger sibling.

In addition, the founder, chairman and chief executive of The Cheesecake Factory Inc., based in Calabasas Hills, Calif., is pondering two milestones for 2005: opening his 100th Cheesecake Factory unit by year-end and hitting $1 billion in sales for that brand alone.

What really excites him is that the $1 billion figure does not include sales from the Grand Lux brand or from the company’s bakery, opened by his parents more than a quarter-century ago.

“We are one of the smallest chains to hit a billion dollars in sales,” Overton says. “Our national average is $11 million a restaurant. We do about $1,000 a square foot across the whole chain.”

The company’s annual sales are about $930 million, with some $750,000 to $1 million passing through each Cheesecake Factory store every year.

It’s no wonder then that Overton also this year will join a select group of MenuMasters Hall of Fame honorees as well. Overton says he is honored to be included among such good company as his friends famed restaurateur Paul Prudhomme and Warren LeRuth, renowned for his food product development skills.

He also notes his own R&D executive chef Robert Okura, who received a MenuMasters Single Product Rollout award in 2002 for his miso salmon dish.

“We have a very dedicated team that does nothing but look for new menu items and try to improve all the dishes we have constantly,” Overton says.

Yet if things had turned out differently if much of Southern California had not been enamored with the cheesecakes provided in the 1970s by his parents, Oscar and Evelyn Overton, in their Calabasas Hills bakery Overton just might not be enjoying the foodservice success he has today.

“I either would have gone back to law school or gone into commercial real estate,” Overton says.

In 1967 he attended Hastings College of Law in San Francisco, which he later left to chase another dream as a rock drummer with the Billy Roberts Blues Band, whose leader penned the Jimi Hendrix hit, “Hey Joe.” By 1971 he had convinced his parents to relocate from Detroit to Los Angeles, where they opened their bakery. Overton soon left the music business to lend his parents a hand.

Life changed for him from that day on.

“I was 28 years old when I opened the first store in Beverly Hills,” Overton says. “I was only doing it to help my parents; I had never worked in a restaurant. Once I got in the restaurant business, I found I liked it quite a bit the age groups, the here and now of it, the social part of it.”

He also discovered talents and abilities he didn’t know he had. He could go out and interpret menus dishes he’d tasted in other places and reinterpret them for the casual-dining market.

“For whatever reason, I have very good taste buds,” Overton says. “I can remember flavor and work to where we get a dish to where it’s what we all want.”

Overton also loved the business aspect of running a restaurant. “Really, it’s a place where I can use all my talents and bring out talents I never even knew I had,” Overton says.

“Sometimes you find a niche and you end up both loving it and being successful, and that really was Cheesecake Factory and the restaurant business.”

He threw himself into the business, going public with just five restaurants and building an infrastructure that both would grow the business and withstand the test of time.

“Working with the chefs and R&D people that we have now has been very gratifying and all-consuming and I underline ‘all-consuming,’ as the restaurant business is for most successful people,” Overton says. “I guess that’s how it changed my life: It kind of became my life.”

He says he is pleased that his parents, who have passed on, had an inkling of what the business would grow into almost three decades later.

“I really think they got a great feel for where we were going,” he says. “I think they got a bit of pride and satisfaction; all their lives they wanted to be entrepreneurial and have a business of their own.”

Today Cheesecake Factory touts some 50 different varieties of cheesecake, and at any time there’s a choice of 35 to 40 varieties in the restaurants. The company also sells 20 noncheesecake desserts.

The nondessert menu has grown as well.

“When we first started, it was a two-sided menu, although it had the same categories that we have today,” Overton says. “It has exploded from 50 items to a pretty standard 200, plus all the desserts. It’s much richer, more diverse, much more of a melting pot of American flavors and tastes.”

He and his staff have worked hard to keep up with changing American tastes and trends by updating the menu twice a year since 1978. And Overton always has the ultimate say on what gets in and what doesn’t.

“I am the final tasting panel,” he says. “I also have been lucky enough to have been able to contribute menu ideas and the menu structure over the years.”

Customers who patronize his stores come back because they like the food, the ambience and the price, he says; an average check runs about $16.60.

Most entrepreneurs, he notes, probably would have left the business a long time ago, but Overton says he still has big plans for the company he helped build.

He admits he does hope one day to create additional brands and, perhaps, run a multiconcept operation. “In the future it’s natural just like Darden, just like Brinker if you’re going to grow, you’re going to want more concepts to be able to open up restaurants where you want to and when you want to and not be forced to grow for growth’s sake.”

And Overton says he plans to be there to see it all happen, remaining the entrepreneur at the helm.

“I’m still enjoying being founder, chairman and CEO,” he says. “There are lots of things for me to do with my set of talents at this point. I am still here, still enjoying it.”