Bob Chinn, Pioneering Suburban Restaurant Owner, Dies at 99 | Eater Chicago

"Opened in December 1982 with his daughter Marilyn, the Wheeling seafood restaurant Bob Chinn's Crab House grew into an enormous, enormously profitable institution known for its crab legs, garlic rolls, and mai tais. Within a few years it was one of the most popular — and one of the loudest (the Tribune clocked the dining room at 87 decibels in 1987) — restaurants in the Chicago area; after a 1987 remodel the dining room expanded from a 300-person capacity to 630 (it now seats 736), and Saturday waits could stretch to two hours because it did not take reservations for parties smaller than 10. By 1999 it was the top-grossing independent restaurant in the nation at about $25 million a year, and even in 2020 it ranked 30th on Restaurant Business Online while serving more than 625,000 meals a year despite average checks roughly a third to a half those of other high-grossing Chicago-area entries. Family-run — with children, grandchildren, nieces and nephews working there — Chinn himself remained a regular presence into his 90s, chatting with customers and coordinating staff via walkie-talkies; he personally arranged fresh flown-in seafood by driving to O'Hare to pick up shipments (installing tanks in the basement to keep crabs and lobsters alive) and kept the handwritten, photocopied daily menu and inexpensive dishware that contributed to its seafood-shack charm. Modeled variously after fresh seafood restaurants in Hong Kong or Joe's Stone Crab in Miami, the Crab House kept costs low by buying in volume from wholesalers and never really duplicated its success elsewhere despite licensed spinoffs and family attempts to copy the name." - Aimee Levitt