A prototype built at home.

Rainforest Cafe was the idea of Steven Schussler, a restaurateur in Minnesota. When his themed-restaurant concept failed to attract investors in the early 1990s, The Hustle reported in June 2024, he built a version of it in his own house, complete with waterfalls, tropical birds and robotic gorillas, and invited potential backers to tour it. According to the magazine, the house held fog and mist machines, a greenhouse full of butterflies, life-size animatronic creatures, a neon sign reading “Paradise” and a replica shop stocked with T-shirts and stuffed animals. The magazine says the casino executive and investor Lyle Berman eventually organised funding for the restaurant after visiting the house more than once.

The first Rainforest Cafe opened at the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota, in 1994. English Wikipedia gives the opening date as 3 February 1994; The Hustle gives October 1994. Thrillist, writing in December 2022, also places the first location at the Mall of America in 1994.

According to The Hustle, the restaurant took a long time to build and went over budget, much of it on the scenery. It ordered gorillas, monkeys, snakes, elephants and giant butterflies from a custom animatronics firm in Apopka, Florida, and ran on a computer system that controlled the lights, the water and several sound systems. Live parrots were part of the original design, and the magazine says Schussler had to consult health officials and install a special filtration system before they were allowed.

The chain grew quickly in the 1990s, and English Wikipedia says the first location outside the United States opened in London in June 1997. Schussler later described the story in a 2010 book, It’s a Jungle in There, The Hustle reports, and went on to found Schussler Creative, a company that develops themed restaurants. The magazine says its later projects include the T-Rex Cafe and Yak & Yeti restaurants at Walt Disney World in Florida.

The Hustle reported that, as at other themed chains of the period, guests walked through a Rainforest Cafe retail store to reach the restaurant, and that children bought stuffed animals, T-shirts and puppets there. The company went public in 1995, the magazine says, and used the money to expand into tourist centres and shopping malls.

Storms, canopy and a talking tree.

English Wikipedia describes rooms designed to evoke a tropical rainforest, with artificial plants, fog machines, waterfalls and animals. The ceiling and much of the walls are lined with artificial foliage; lower areas and booths are finished in faux rock; brick textures suggest ruins; and support pillars are shaped like tree trunks. The same article describes a statue of Atlas holding up a globe marked “Rescue The Rainforest,” papier-mâché birds and butterflies hanging from the trees, and a ceiling over the dining room that imitates a starry night sky, made by Fiber Optic Systems Inc. of New Jersey.

The effects run on a timetable. Every so often, English Wikipedia says, a simulated thunderstorm breaks out, with strobe lights and thunder played through subwoofers, and The Hustle describes simulated storms that dusted the dining room with mist. The bar sits under a giant mushroom behind a curtain of rain, and its stools are shaped like the legs of animals; English Wikipedia credits them to the sculptor Glenn Carter.

Then there are the animatronic animals. English Wikipedia lists gorillas, elephants, leopards, orangutans, jaguars, tigers and others, placed above diners’ heads so they can be seen from a distance and look larger, and a talking tree in the shop that delivers rainforest facts. Thrillist opened its 2022 article on the chain with an animatronic tree frog, and in August 2020 Block Club Chicago named the River North restaurant’s tree frog as “Cha! Cha!” In that report, the building’s owner said his agreement with the outgoing tenant let him keep one of the animatronic gorillas.

Block Club Chicago reported that when the Chicago restaurant at Clark Street closed in 2020, workers removed its neon “Rainforest Cafe” signage from the building.

Signs, rooms and menus.

A themed or full-service restaurant chain carries its identity in more than a logo. The name on the street sign, the lettering on the door, the layout of the dining room, the objects on the walls and the design of the printed menu all work together. For a chain, the same set of cues has to travel from one site to the next, so the brand is often set down as a repeatable kit of signage, colours, fixtures and furniture rather than a single building.

Themed restaurants push that kit further. Their interiors may borrow from a place, a period or a pastime, using collected objects, built scenery, lighting and sound to carry the theme, while full-service chains tend to lean on materials, table settings and menu typography to set a tone. Ownership matters here too, because a restaurant name can pass between companies while the sign above the door stays much the same.

Each guide separates what independent sources record from what the company says about itself — its founding story, its owners over time, and how its name, signage, interiors and menus have changed — and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word.

Owned by Landry’s since 2000.

Landry’s of Houston has owned Rainforest Cafe since 2000. The Hustle reported that the chain was sold to Landry’s that September in an all-cash deal, and Thrillist in 2022 described the 2000 acquisition by Landry’s, Inc., a restaurant holding company, as the event that kept the chain going. English Wikipedia names Tilman Fertitta as the group’s chairman, president and chief executive. In August 2020 Block Club Chicago described the Houston-based owner as a company that also operates Morton’s Steakhouse and Bubba Gump Shrimp.

The Hustle reported in 2024 that the original Mall of America restaurant moved from the first floor of the mall to the third in 2016, and that the live parrots no longer fly in the canopy, with fish tanks, waterfalls and misting machines phased out.

Thrillist placed Rainforest Cafe in 2022 within a wider return of interest in the experiential chain restaurants of the 1990s, which it said a younger audience views with a mix of nostalgia and irony; the article opened with a pair of YouTubers who set out in May 2022 to visit Rainforest Cafes across the United States and Canada.

For a design guide, Rainforest Cafe shows how a built environment, with its animals, light and sound, can do the work of a logo. Compare Hard Rock Cafe, a themed chain built around real objects rather than scenery, and The Cheesecake Factory. For this guide we use canopy green, tree-frog orange and mist with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Rainforest Cafe’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.