•  In business for 25 years
• Pays workers an average of $17 an hour
• Covers 90% of insurance costs for full-time and part-time employees
• Stock has doubled
• Revenues have grown by 70% over the past 5 years
• “You have to recognize — and I don’t mean this in an acrimonious sense — that the people in that business are trying to make money between now and next Thursday. We’re trying to build a company that’s going to be here 50 and 60 years from now. We owe that to the communities where we do business. We owe that to our employees, that they can count on us for security. We have 140,000 employees and their families; that’s a significant number of people who count on us. We owe it to our suppliers. Think about the people who produce products for us — you could probably multiply our family of employees by three or four times. And we owe it to our customers to continue to offer good prices. Our presence in a community makes pricing better throughout that community because when you have a tough competitor in the marketplace, prices come down.”  CEO, Jim Senegal
• They recycle 100% of the boxes that goods are shipped to their stores in
• Changed the shape of their cashew boxes in order to improve packaging thus saving the company 560 truckloads a year for shipping that single product (cashews).

After sampling the salad bar, the feasting of 15 different meats ranging from parmesean pork to house sirloin to bacon wrapped chicken filet to side of lamb (etc), began.  All cuts were fantastic and struck the palate with unique and intriguing punches (this is me acting like I know something about palate’s).  The service, once again, was wonderful.  Always on time, the teamwork displayed by the entire serving staff was on top of our every want and need, no question about it.  The service made the meal enjoyable and freeing.  No work required by us.  Every meat was cooked to perfection, and the staff was readily available to answer any questions about side dishes we received and/or the salad bar combinations.  As for the rest, the deserts were delectable.  We sampled the volcano brownie (nicknamed this by us because it looked like a volcano and oozed chocolate).  For opinion on this desert, take all previous positive adjectives and place them in front of this as well.

Overall, Fogo de Chao’s was a great restaurant.  Support the restaurant as these type of venues are just what Indy needs in order to continue it’s growth in culture and attractiveness (sure beats instituting a home-made China Town…what?).  One last note, be prepared to pay $50-$60 a person and be prepared to not even care.