The wild tale of the man who founded Rainforest Cafe
When Steven Schussler’s themed restaurant failed to attract investors in the early ’90s, he built one in his own house — complete with waterfalls, tropical birds, and robotic gorillas.
At this chain of “eatertainment” restaurants, you were surrounded by aquariums, waterfalls, and animatronic jungle cats. Live parrots screeched from a canopy of greenery, and simulated thunderstorms dusted the dining hall with clouds of mist.
Over the prerecorded grunts and grumbles of gorillas, a waiter in a safari outfit would lean in close and utter a phrase that childhood dreams were made of: “Your adventure is about to begin.”
Rainforest Cafe wasn’t just a kitschy tourist trap; it was a money-minting machine. A single location could gross in excess of $15m a year. And for a brief period of time in the mid-’90s, the publicly traded chain was one of the hottest stocks on Wall Street. Three decades later, there are still 23 locations all over the world.
Raised in Queens, New York, in a working-class family, he got his first job in 1962, at the age of seven — a gig shoveling snow for his neighbors. By the time he was 16, he’d worked dozens of odd jobs, often lying about his age to land work:
