The Kettle

Kettle Restaurants is an American restaurant chain, offering breakfast, lunch, and dinner 24 hours a day. The first location was opened by founder Harry Chambers, Sr. and his brother, Danny, in 1968 in Nacogdoches, Texas. He gained experience managing Toddle Houserestaurants in Baton Rouge while obtaining an engineering degree at LSU. Soon they opened additional locations. The chain began offering franchise locations some years later and reached a peak of over 265 locations. These were concentrated in the southern half of the United States, from Florida west to New Mexico. The brothers sold the Houston-based chain and 119 locations to private equity investors Stephen Portis and Eric Porten in September 1995. This move took the company from a publicly registered company to a private one. Most of the restaurants have since closed. As of 2008, there were 21 locations in Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Arizona, and Tennessee, but today there are only 4 locations, in Tucson, Arizona, College Station, Texas, Bryan, Texas, and Laredo, Texas.