PIZZA RANCH

'The Pizza Ranch, Inc.' founded in 1981 is a "fast casual" restaurant chain. Pizza Ranch offers pizza, chicken, salad bar, and a pizza and chicken buffet. Pizza Ranch has 127 locations in Illinois, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota and Wisconsin.

Contents

History

Menu

Controversy

References

External links

History

Starting as a single store in Hull, Iowa, the Pizza Ranch, which specializes in pizza and chicken, has grown steadily and now has franchises in eight states. What makes Pizza Ranch unique is that most of their stores offer a host of dining options. ^[1]

Menu

Patrons have two options; ordering off the menu, or at designated times, eating from the "Mile-Long Buffet".
The menu features standard pizzeria items: Breadsticks, wings, and salads, as well as "Crispy Ranch Chicken"--the company's own recipe for fried chicken.
The buffet features the above mentioned items, as well as a salad bar.

Controversy

Fifty-nine-year-old Lawrence Vander Esch of Hull, the founder of the Pizza Ranch chain, was sentenced in 2001 to ten years in prison. Vander Esch pleaded guilty in 2001 to fondling teenage male employees of the Pizza Ranch in Hull after falsely persuading them to donate semen samples for a medical research project. ^[2]
Vander Esch was sentenced to ten years in prison but was released in March 2005 for good behavior.
A month before his release, the Iowa Supreme Court ruled in a separate case that sexual abuse does not occur if a defendant deceives a victim to get consent to perform a sex act. The ruling was applied retroactively to Vander Esch. ^[3]

References

1. http://www.pizzaranch.com/company/index.php?id=2
2. http://www.woi-tv.com/Global/story.asp?S=5684601&nav=1LFX
3. http://sadlynormal.wordpress.com/2006/10/20/ia-judge-clears-pizza-ranch-founder-of-sexual-abuse-convictions/

External links

★ The Pizza Ranch, Inc.