PART I

ITEM 1.    Business

Overview

Red Robin Gourmet Burgers, Inc., together with its subsidiaries, is a casual dining restaurant chain focused on serving an imaginative selection of high quality gourmet burgers in a family-friendly atmosphere. We currently own and operate 100 restaurants in 13 states, and have 98 additional restaurants operating under franchise or license agreements in 17 states and Canada.

Our menu is centered around our signature product, the gourmet burger, which we make from beef, chicken, veggie, fish, turkey and pot roast and serve in a variety of recipes. We offer a wide selection of toppings for our gourmet burgers, including fresh guacamole, roasted green chilies, honey mustard dressing, grilled pineapple, crispy onion straws, sautéed mushrooms and a choice of six different cheeses. In addition to our gourmet burgers, which accounted for approximately 44.4% of our total food sales in 2002, we also serve an array of other food items that are designed to appeal to a broad group of guests, including salads, soups, appetizers, other entrees such as rice bowls and pasta, desserts and our signature Mad Mixology® alcoholic and non-alcoholic specialty beverages.

Our restaurants are designed to create a fun and memorable dining experience in a family-friendly atmosphere and provide our guests with an exceptional dining value. Our concept attracts a broad guest base by appealing to the entire family, particularly women, teens, kids ages eight to 12 whom we refer to as tweens, and other children. Our mascot “Red” appeals to toddlers, and our carousel horses, televisions in the floors, three dimensional art and humorous posters appeal to children of all ages. We believe that our quick meal preparation, upbeat, popular music and enthusiastic team members enable us to achieve high sales productivity and create a sense of activity and excitement. All of our menu items are designed to be delivered to guests in a time-efficient manner, and we have a per person average check of approximately $10.00, which includes beverages.

To increase guest traffic, we locate our restaurants near high activity areas, such as retail centers, big box shopping centers and entertainment centers. Women, teens and tweens are extremely attractive consumers to real estate developers in these types of locations as they often strive to attract a similar consumer base to ours. We believe that these individuals are the primary visitors to the high activity areas where our restaurants are located and are predominantly responsible for family dining decisions. Recent data from an independent source indicates that approximately 28.0% of our guests are in the highly desirable under 18 consumer segment, which compares to 20.0% in the major casual dining bar and grill chains. In addition, approximately 57.0% of our guests are females. We believe our unique guest demographic mix provides us with a competitive advantage over other casual dining chains, enhancing our ability to enter into real estate locations favorable to us.

We believe that the appeal of our imaginative, high quality product offerings, our fun, family-friendly atmosphere, and our ability to operate in a wide variety of real estate formats and geographic locations have created an attractive restaurant model, providing us with significant opportunities for continued growth through both new company-owned and franchised restaurants.

History

Our history

In 1969, we opened our first restaurant in Seattle, Washington near the University of Washington campus. In 1979, Mike Snyder opened our first franchised Red Robin® restaurant in Yakima, Washington.

In 1985, Skylark Co., Ltd., a large publicly-traded restaurant company based in Japan, purchased a majority interest in our company. At that time, we had seven company-owned restaurants and 15 franchised restaurants.

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