Girves Brown Derby Turns 85

(This post is excerpted from Scene Dining Editor Doug Trattner’s weekly CLE Bites newsletter. Want more stories like this directly in your inbox every Saturday morning? Subscribe here.)

When Gus Girves opened the Brown Derby in 1941, he had no idea that there was another restaurant of the same name out in Los Angeles. That famous eatery, housed in an iconic building shaped like its namesake bowler hat, opened in 1929, but that would have been news to Girves.

“He didn’t even know about it,” says his grandson, Parry Girves. “Back then there was no internet or anything, so how would he know.”

That West Coast brand dissolved decades ago, its whimsical building demolished in 1980, but Girves’ Brown Derby would go on to thrive, expanding at one point to a mighty chain of 52 locations spread across Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Texas, Florida and beyond.

This year, the homegrown steakhouse chain with humble beginnings will celebrate its 85th birthday, a rare honor given the dynamic nature of the restaurant industry.

“There’s not a lot of places that can say they’ve been around for 85 years,” adds Girves.

In 1941, Gus purchased a bar on E. Market Street in Akron, directly across the road from Goodyear Tire and Rubber’s main plant.

“Akron was bustling back in the 1940s, so he was open very long hours to accommodate all the different shifts,” says Girves. “It was just this bar that he made, over time, into a restaurant.”

Unlike today, steakhouses were neither popular nor high-end back then. Girves understood his blue-collar clientele and focused, from the very beginning, on value.

“I remember my dad telling me the story of the steak that put us on the map, which was the top sirloin,” he says of his father, Parris. “We were doing business with a meat company called Akron Standard and they suggested that steak and he went with it.”

That budget-friendly cut allowed the Brown Derby to offer a grilled steak, salad and baked potato for the evenhanded price of $1.50.

“You could get a great meal with great portions at a great value,” Girves says, neatly summing up the formula that fueled the brand.

By 1964, there were a dozen Brown Derby restaurants scattered around Northeast Ohio. In 1975, there were 35 locations and the company was doing $40 million in sales. They issued their own credit cards. They opened Brown Derby Motel and Supper Clubs. They had a large central commissary where they had on-staff butchers who would cut fresh beef into steaks, chops and chopped-beef patties.

In the early 1970s you could get a complete sirloin steak dinner with salad and baked potato for $2.80. That “salad” happened to be from the region’s very first salad bar, billed as the “Unlimited Super Salad Table.” The 1970s was a crazy time in general, but it was wild at the Brown Derby. Many locations added “Luv Pubs,” lively bars designed to keep diners from heading out after their steak dinners.

“You’d open a door to the bar that, let’s say after 9 o’clock, became a disco tech with live music,” says Girves. “We’d be booking some of the hottest bands around – not just Cleveland, but the region, and there would be lines outside the door.”

As wild and free as the `70s were, the 1980s ushered in a world of change. National chain restaurants were slipping into neighborhoods and completely disrupting the existing landscape. Places like Ponderosa, Applebee’s, Chi-Chi’s, The Ground Round and more laid waste to small, independent operators who couldn’t match the value, diversity of product or the excitement of something new and exotic. The Brown Derby said goodbye to dozens of locations in that period.

“I’m not going to say that we were the only game in town, but the competition was just… you didn’t have chains on every corner,” says Girves. “We would open a restaurant in an area, and we might have serviced that whole community.”

Many of the best restaurant operators were immigrants, adds Girves, who simply aged out, their offspring opting for “professional” careers over running the family Brown Derby.

“They became attorneys and doctors and architects and things like that.”

Today, there are three remaining Brown Derby restaurants, in Middleburg Hts., Medina and Streetsboro. You can still order the top sirloin, but it’s now joined by strip steaks, filets, rib-eyes and porterhouses. One thing hasn’t changed since Gus cooked his first steak 85 years ago, and that’s the wood-fired grill. Long before it became trendy to do so, Brown Derby grilled every steak over a real wood fire. Still does.

“It’s a mix of indigenous hardwoods: cherry, apple, oak,” says Girves. “We go through more than a cord of wood per week at each restaurant. That’s what sets us apart from everyone else. It’s how we age our steaks, how we season our steaks and how we cook our steaks.”

Diners can also opt for grilled salmon, lobster tails, baby back ribs, pork chops and more. Brown Derby has always punched above its class in the wine department and serves great cocktails at its bars.

“We’re doing great,” Girves reports. “Every store is doing really good business. It’s nice to have customers come in, enjoy a great meal and great service – just taking care of the community. That’s what keeps us going.”

Up next is a complete renovation of its Middleburg Heights location, which will take place within the next six months.

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