Outback Steakhouse

[TheFugitive]

Though if they do a decent job (which they must if they have stayed around this long), they should get a boost in business - not too many people outside of true city blocks have a restaurant in potential walking distance from their homes :)

You're right, they deserve a lot of credit for hanging in there all alone in an empty lot for all those years. One thing that may have helped them is that the next-closest Outback location was destroyed by a flood. I would actually be quite happy if an Outback Steakhouse was within walking distance of my house.

[jconsolmagno]

The Outback location in Robinson Township, PA west of Pittsburgh is in a very strange location.

It's away from the beaten path of Robinson Town Center where most of the chain restaurants are located.  It is up on top of a hill all by itself.  When it opened this location was in the parking lot of a Super Kmart store that filled the entire hilltop and could be easily seen as you were driving to the airport.

Kmart then hit the iceberg and began closing stores.  At the same time the shale fracking boom was taking off in Pennsylvania and turning the state into an energy dynamo.  Chevron negotiated a deal with Kmart to buy that location, demolish it and build a regional headquarters on the site.

This transaction occurred and the relatively new Kmart was torn down. This left Outback all by itself at the edge of a huge empty lot.  Before Chevron was able to get going on construction of this new HQ there was a political change (i.e. Pennsylvania elected a Governor who wanted to hike taxes on the fracking industry).  Chevron did not like this so they canceled their plans to build that facility and left the state.

So the Outback just trundled along all by its lonesome up on top of that hill until the property was sold and rezoned residential.  So there is a new neighborhood of newly constructed houses going up all around this Outback Steakhouse, the only commercial property in the vicinity. 

Walk out the door of Outback and find yourself in a residential neighborhood.  Weird.

Always wondered about this location, thanks for the backstory.

[TheFugitive]

A former colleague of mine from Hills had been one of the managers at this hilltop Super Kmart location.  He told me that once he had to call the cops on Christmas Eve because last-minute shoppers refused to leave the store at closing time.

[TheFugitive]

I was recently out in that area of town with my wife, and since it was getting late we decided to have dinner out.  She said "Hey, how about Outback Steakhouse?"  So we headed for this location.

There are no signs down on the main road telling you that it's up the road to your right on top of the hill.  And when you get to the top of the hill it is very easy to miss it, since some trees have grown in front of the sign, and by the time you drive by them the restaurant is in your rear-view mirror.

The development looks like it is finished and there are a lot of houses all around this place.  We asked our waitress how business was, and she told us it was pretty good.  We asked how, since they had no sign down on the main road and you could barely see them from the access road.  She replied "we have a lot of regulars".  Which I suppose means people who have been going there since back in the days when they shared the top of that hill with Kmart, and people who live in the homes that have been built all around it since.

Not your typical success formula for a chain restaurant I must say.