private industry food service founded 1965 in cincinnati ohio usa founder four daoud brothers fahhad fahid basheer bishara headquarters 650 lunken park drive cincinnati ohio 45226 1800 area served ohio kentucky indiana key people roger david ceo 1 products cincinnati chili slogan the flavor of cincinnati website goldstarchili.com gold star chili is a restaurant chain based in cincinnati ohio that sells cincinnati chili . the original restaurant was established in the cincinnati neighborhood of mt. washington in 1965 by four daoud brothers from jordan . gold star chili is the official chili of the cincinnati bengals . 2 contents 1 history 2 today 3 references 4 external links history edit gold star chili was founded in 1965 3 by four daoud brothers fahhad fahid basheer and bishara daoud in mount washington originally under the name hamburger heaven . 4 as the original name suggests the original vision for their restaurant was primarily hamburgers . however they also had a chili recipe that they began modifying soon finding that customers were ordering the chili more than any of the other menu items . as a result the brothers changed the restaurant name to gold star chili and removed many of the other items from their menu . 4 the brothers some of whom eventually changed their family name to david continued to run the restaurant as it grew into a chain until retiring in 1990 . 1 for the next quarter century the daoud david family brought in ceos with outside experience . 1 in 1993 tony p rez 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 p rez s nickname was big dog and since the chain was ready to promote their new foot long cheese coney gold star saw a promotional opportunity naming it big doggie . for the promotion the store offered customers 16 inch 410 mm miniature louisville slugger baseball bats for us 1.99 and p rez 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 . 5 in may 2015 the founding family returned to the company s top management when one of the founders sons roger david became ceo upon the retirement of mike rohrkemper . the younger david spent 10 years working in gold star s marketing department after college and then served as a marketing executive at two other firms . next he spent 10 years as ceo of another cincinnati based restaurant chain buffalo wings & rings before returning to gold star . 1 today edit gold star chili restaurant covington kentucky 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 pepperonis 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 ellenbee leggett to be distributed to the gold star restaurants . 6 according to an interview with basheer daoud a son of one of the founders by neal conan of national public radio in 2005 the chain s commissary produces nearly 20 000 pounds 9 100 kg of food product for the restaurants per day . 4 gold star chili restaurants both company owned and franchised are located in ohio kentucky and indiana a total of 93 as of april 2012 . 7 additionally a relative of the daoud family founded chili house restaurants that serve a similar product 8 in egypt jordan bahrain iraq saudi arabia and syria . 8 gold star chili for the past several years has been a major sponsor of the cincinnati bengals . references edit a b c d campbell polly february 26 2015 . gold star chili turns 50 welcomes family as ceo . the cincinnati enquirer . retrieved july 25 2015 . taste of cincinnati . cincinnati bengals . 2007 07 13 . retrieved 2007 08 25 . cincinnati chili stakes its claim cincinnati enquirer ; sep. 10 2004 a b c listener letters and hello cincinnati . national public radio . 2005 08 22 . retrieved 2007 08 24 . walkup carolyn 1993 08 09 . gold star chili says so long to the big doggie . promotional campaign for chili hot dogs . nation s restaurant news . retrieved 2007 08 25 . lumis susan herrmann 1989 04 16 . fare of the country a city s romance with a bowl of chili . new york times . retrieved 2007 08 25 . locations . gold star chili . retrieved 2009 01 14 . a b about us . chili house . retrieved 2007 08 24 . cite error invalid ref tag ; name chili house defined multiple times with different content see the help page . external links edit gold star chili gold star opens in qatar cincinnati business courier retrieved from https en.wikipedia.org w index.php title gold star chili & oldid 743394822 categories restaurants in cincinnati1965 establishments in ohiorestaurants established in 1965cuisine of cincinnatihot dog restaurantshidden categories pages with reference errorspages with duplicate reference names navigation menu personal tools not logged intalkcontributionscreate accountlog in namespaces article talk variants views read edit view history more search navigation main pagecontentsfeatured contentcurrent eventsrandom articledonate to wikipediawikipedia store interaction helpabout wikipediacommunity portalrecent changescontact page tools what links hererelated changesupload filespecial pagespermanent linkpage informationwikidata itemcite this page print export create a bookdownload as pdfprintable version languages add links this page was last modified on 9 october 2016 at 13 06 . text is available under the creative commons attribution sharealike license ; 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