MapMuse - Locate Gold Star Chili Near You

...under the name "Hamburger Heaven" (which predates Gold Star Chili). As the original name suggests, the original vision for their restaurant was primarily hamburgers. However, they also had a chili recipe that they began tweaking with, soon finding that customers were ordering the chili more than any of the other menu items. So the brothers changed the restaurant name to Gold Star Chili, removing many of the other menu items from their list of offerings.

In 1993 Tony Perez, then manager of the Cincinnati Reds and former member of the Big Red Machine, kicked off a promotion campaign for the restaurant. During his baseball years Perez's nickname was "Big Dog", and since the chain was ready to promote their new foot long cheese coney, Gold Star naturally saw a promotional opportunity (naming it "Big Doggie"). For the promotion the store offered customers 16-inch miniature Louisville Slugger baseball bats for $1.99 USD, and Perez did various in-store signing sessions for fans. In the past, Gold Star Chili has also hired other Reds players for promotional campaigns, most notably Pete Rose

Today

The famous chili is produced at the chain's commissary, starting with large vats of suet which are melted down. Added to this are dried white onions, which cook for approximately thirty minutes. The next ingredients are ground beef and their "secret" concoction of spices, which cook for another hour or more. Finally, tomato sauce and water are added, which are boiled for three hours into a concentrate. After a cooling period, the product is then packed and shipped to one of their restaurants.

According to an interview with Bashir Daoud (a grandson of one of the founders) by Neal Conan of National Public Radio on August 22, 2005, there are one-hundred and five restaurants owned by the chain. The chain's commissary produces nearly twenty-thousand pounds of food product for the restaurants per day.

In addition to Gold Star Chili franchises located in Ohio, Kentucky, and Indiana, their products can also be found at Chili House restaurants in Egypt, Jordan, Palestine, Russia, and Syria.