BJ’s Restaurants, Inc. owns and operates 156 restaurants as of November 2014, located in California, Texas, Florida, Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, Washington, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Kentucky, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Maryland, New Mexico, Virginia and Arkansas. Each of our restaurants is operated either as a BJ’s Restaurant & Brewery ® which includes a brewery within the restaurant, a BJ’s Restaurant & Brewhouse ® which receives the beer it sells from one of our breweries or an approved third-party craft brewer of our proprietary recipe beers (“contract brewer”), or a BJ’s Pizza & Grill ® which is a smaller format, full service restaurant with a more limited menu than our other restaurants. Our menu features our BJ’s ® award-winning, signature deep-dish pizza, our own handcrafted beers as well as a wide selection of appetizers, entrees, pastas, sandwiches, specialty salads and desserts including our unique Pizookie ® dessert. Several of our BJ’s Restaurant & Brewery restaurants feature in-house brewing facilities where BJ’s proprietary handcrafted beers are produced for many of our restaurants. The first BJ’s restaurant was opened in 1978 in Orange County, California and centered on bringing the unique flavor of deep-dish pizza to California. The Company acquired the original BJ’s restaurants in 1995 from the original owners. Our initial public offering of common stock occurred in 1996. Over the years we expanded the BJ’s concept from its beginnings as a small pizzeria to a full service, high energy casual dining restaurant with over 100 menu items, including appetizers, specialty salads, soups, pastas, sandwiches, entrees and desserts. In 1996, we introduced our own handcrafted beers through our first BJ’s Restaurant & Brewery in Brea, California. Since that time, we have opened additional BJ’s Restaurants & Breweries where our handcrafted beers are manufactured for sale in many of our restaurants. The differentiated, high-quality, handcrafted beers have added a unique dimension to the BJ’s concept which further distinguishes BJ’s from many other restaurant concepts and compliments our signature pizza and many of our other menu items. Over the years, our renowned beers have earned 25 medals at the Great American Beer Festival, including two Gold medals in 2008.