NOVI, MI—Bloomfield Hills, Mich.-based mall operators Taubman Centers Inc. announced Friday that the Cheesecake Factory is finally returning to its roots, with plans to open a restaurant here at Taubman’s Twelve Oaks Mall.
The company, which operates 177 restaurants throughout the country, has never had a full-service restaurant in its birthplace in Michigan. The company’s origins are in Detroit, where Oscar and Evelyn Overton opened a small bakery in the 1950s. However, the couple moved to the Los Angeles area, and their son David, who graduated from Detroit-based Wayne State University, later started the thriving restaurant chain.
"Having grown up in Detroit and watched my parents start their cheesecake business here in the 1950s, opening a Cheesecake Factory at Twelve Oaks feels like a true homecoming," says David Overton, founder and CEO of the Cheesecake Factory Inc., in a statement.
The Twelve Oaks restaurant is expected to open later this year, though the location at the 1.5-million-sq.-ft. mall is uncertain, as the property is mostly occupied. The 8,430-square-foot restaurant will accommodate approximately 225 guests and another 60 on the patio, according to the Taubman statement.