Our founder, Steele Platt, in the original Long Beach offices

Like most young ambitious restaurateurs, Steele Platt's career started in the heart of the house where he washed dishes while attending high school on the Hawaiian island of Oahu. After graduation he enrolled in the School of Hotel and Restaurant Management at the University of Denver working his way through college as a busboy, bar back, server and bartender. Armed with a business degree and plenty of hands on experience, Steele created his first Denver restaurant at the age of 24 – "Kailua's at the Tivoli" - which paid homage to his Hawaiian hometown - Kailua. Within five years Platt's portfolio grew to include a half-dozen themed restaurants during the late 1980's - including The Boiler Room and EFEX Nightclub - Denver's largest nightclub at the time.

In the early 1990s Platt closed his mini-empire and headed to Southern California. He settled in Orange County where he enjoyed the California lifestyle. Within two years, he had used up his savings. His story went from riches to rags as he worked two jobs, car salesman by day and bartender by night, just to make ends meet. After stumbling upon an abandoned waterfront restaurant in Long Beach during a bike ride from Newport Beach, he began to plot his next career move and restaurant concept. While he was bartending at a restaurant in Huntington Beach he wrote the business plan for a concept he called Yard House. He borrowed elements from The Boiler Room, one of his successful Denver establishments, and added additional components that would make his new concept a dining revolution. The Yard House, named for the glass yard served during Colonial times, would feature a vast selection of draft beer, a continuous playlist of classic rock, and an eclectic menu of both classic and innovative fare.

As the first and, for the time being, only employee of his new company, Yard House Restaurants, Platt assumed many roles, from arranging the financing and lease negotiations to creating the restaurant's conceptual design. On December 7, 1996, the first Yard House opened along the Long Beach waterfront and featured 250 taps of beer, an extensive menu of American fusion cuisine, and a state-of-the-art audio and video system with each song and artist hand selected by Platt from his private music library. To this day Platt has never relinquished his role as the company's music mastermind and continues to create the daily playlist for each Yard House restaurant.