For decades, the creation of multi-concept restaurant companies was most often the domain of business types who knew food, knew restaurants and, most importantly, knew how to crunch numbers. These days, they still rule the multi-concept world, but many chef/operators have entered the picture in recent years with the idea that owning one or two hip independent restaurants would never make them rich. To reach the land of plenty, food-obsessed chefs have learned to cross over the line from simply thinking about their next menu to thinking about their next concept. It’s this new breed of chef that has led to the creation of some of the country’s most interesting multi-concept companies. What follows is what we at RH believe are the coolest multi-concept companies, run by those numbers crunchers and knife geniuses. Without further ado, we present our list of the coolest multi-concept companies in the land.

See last year's coolest multi-concept operators >>