Where did the Rainforest Cafe idea come from?
Steven Schussler spent about three years and roughly $400,000 turning his own house in suburban Minneapolis into a working prototype of a jungle restaurant. He started in 1989, and he was an advertising salesman, not a restaurateur.
Fortune magazine described the result in 1996: "Artificial waterfalls tumbled down custom-made rock formations, animatronic crocodiles bobbed their heads, and speakers piped in the roar of a tropical thunderstorm."
The animals in the house were real ones. In his memoir It's a Jungle In There, Schussler listed "Forty tropical birds, two 150-pound tortoises, a baboon, an iguana and a bevy of tropical fish housed in ten 300-gallon fish tanks." Powering the demonstration took 3,700 extension cords running 20 separate sound, lighting and fog systems.
The house did its job. Lyle Berman, the Minneapolis executive who founded Grand Casinos, put in $1.2 million and became the company's first chairman and chief executive. Rainforest Cafe, Inc. was formed in February 1994, with Schussler as executive vice president for development.
How fast did the chain grow after the 1995 IPO?
The first restaurant opened at the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota, in October 1994. Some reference sites give February 1994, but that date belongs to the company's formation; Minnesota newspapers put the restaurant's debut in the fall, and the second location, at Woodfield Mall outside Chicago, opened about a year later in October 1995.
Rainforest Cafe went public on the Nasdaq in April 1995 under the ticker RAIN. Shares were offered at $6, each with a warrant attached. The offering raised $9.5 million and the warrants brought in another $14.2 million.
Revenue went from $13.45 million in 1995 to $262.69 million in 1999, close to twentyfold in four years. The company opened 34 restaurants in that stretch and topped out at 59.
The rooms were not cheap to build. The Mall of America restaurant cost around $1,000 per square foot, because almost nothing in it came off a shelf. Every waterfall, every animatronic gorilla and every fiberglass banyan trunk was made to order.
Why did the jungle stop making money?
The first crack showed in early 1998. Rainforest Cafe warned that fourth-quarter earnings would fall short, and the stock dropped 40 percent. Restaurants open longer than 18 months were running 11 percent behind the previous year.
Shareholders sued, alleging that management knew sales were sliding while selling their own shares at higher prices. Net income of about $14.65 million in 1998 fell to $5.69 million in 1999, in the same year revenue hit its record.
The math underneath was simple. A themed restaurant sells a first visit brilliantly and a fifth visit badly, and Rainforest Cafe had put most of its rooms in regional malls where the same families walked past every weekend. When those malls started losing anchors, chains like Sam Goody and Toys R Us went with them.
By 2000 the company was planning to shut as many as 20 restaurants in the first quarter of 2001.
Who bought Rainforest Cafe, and for how much?
Landry's, the Houston restaurant group run by Tilman Fertitta, had offered roughly $125 million earlier in 2000 and been rejected by Rainforest Cafe shareholders. It came back in September with a smaller number.
The second offer was $3.25 a share in cash, made through a subsidiary called LSR Acquisition Corp. and worth about $75 million. It expired on October 27, 2000. Around 13,360,000 shares were tendered, and together with the 1,030,800 shares Landry's already owned, that came to nearly 65 percent of the company.
Landry's changed the plan straight away. Instead of chasing shopping-mall traffic, it concentrated the surviving restaurants where tourists go and where a two-hour wait is part of the day out: Disney property, Las Vegas, Niagara Falls, Galveston, Times Square.
Which states still have a Rainforest Cafe?
Eleven of them. In 2026 Rainforest Cafe runs 16 restaurants in the United States across 11 states, plus locations in Canada, Japan, France and Malta, for roughly 22 worldwide. Texas and Florida have more than one. Most of the other states have exactly one.
California is down to a single restaurant, at the Ontario Mills mall east of Los Angeles. The state had four, and the other three closed between 2013 and 2018. New Jersey is also down to one, after the Menlo Park Mall restaurant in Edison closed on February 19, 2025, when its landlord declined to renew the lease.
The tourist closures stung more. The Downtown Disney location at the Disneyland Resort in Anaheim closed on June 30, 2018, for a hotel that was later cancelled, and the building is now a Star Wars Trading Post. Woodfield Mall closed when its lease expired on January 1, 2020. The Rainforest Cafe at Disney Village beside Disneyland Paris, open since 1999, is now expected to close in November 2026, moved back from a reported September date. Disney has not confirmed either date publicly.
Who owns Rainforest Cafe now?
Landry's does, and Landry's belongs to Tilman Fertitta. He bought in the remaining public shares in 2010 and took the company private, and the restaurant group now sits inside Fertitta Entertainment next to Bubba Gump Shrimp Co., Morton's The Steakhouse, Del Frisco's and the Houston Rockets.
Private ownership is part of why the chain has neither vanished nor grown. There is no share price to defend and no quarterly pressure to open units, so a Rainforest Cafe closes when a lease ends rather than in a restructuring announcement. The one recent addition was a pop-up at the Empire State Building in New York in 2024, not a new mall restaurant.
The contrast with its old rival is stark. Planet Hollywood, which had more than 60 locations worldwide at its 1990s peak, was down to about three restaurants and five hotels as of May 2025. Rainforest Cafe lost two thirds of its restaurants and kept the format intact, including the thunderstorm that still rolls through the dining room on a timer every 20 to 25 minutes depending on the location.
Why is Rainforest Cafe popular online again?
Because the children who were taken there in 1998 are adults with phones. Fast Company reported in 2024 on a wave of Rainforest Cafe videos posted by people too young to remember the chain at full size, running the line "You're not just there for the food" as its headline.
The appeal is the same one Chuck E. Cheese animatronics still have: a room built before screens did the work, where a mechanical elephant raises its trunk on a cycle and a fiberglass storm breaks over your appetizers. Very little has been built that way since.
Where to find one today. The restaurants are the only place to see the animatronics, but the merchandise has its own market: souvenir glasses, 1990s graphic tees, mugs, safari hats and the Cha! Cha! tree frog plush that every kid wanted. Sellers list them by the hundred on Etsy's vintage Rainforest Cafe listings, where condition and whether the tag survived do most of the pricing.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Rainforest Cafe still open in 2026?
Yes. Rainforest Cafe still operates 16 restaurants in the United States in 2026, across 11 states, along with locations in Canada, Japan, France and Malta for about 22 worldwide. That is down from a peak of 59 restaurants around the turn of the 2000s, and the Disney Village restaurant near Disneyland Paris is expected to close in November 2026.
Who owns Rainforest Cafe now?
Landry's owns Rainforest Cafe, and has since a tender offer at $3.25 a share, worth about $75 million, that expired on October 27, 2000. Landry's itself is owned by Tilman Fertitta, who took it private in 2010 and holds it through Fertitta Entertainment along with Bubba Gump Shrimp Co. and Morton's The Steakhouse.
Why did so many Rainforest Cafe locations close?
Rainforest Cafe built most of its restaurants in American shopping malls in the late 1990s, and a themed restaurant depends on first visits rather than repeat ones. Sales at older locations were already falling 11 percent year over year by early 1998, the company planned to close up to 20 restaurants in early 2001, and mall closures plus the 2020 pandemic took out most of the rest.