CALABASAS HILLS, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Aug 12, 2026--
The Cheesecake Factory Incorporated (NASDAQ: CAKE) has been recognized as one of the 2026 PEOPLE Companies That Care ®, according to PEOPLE magazine and Great Place to Work ®. The Cheesecake Factory ®ranked 30 on the list, which is largely determined by a confidential employee survey that measures the organization’s culture and ability to care for their employees, their families and the communities where they operate.
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Earning a spot on the list means that The Cheesecake Factory has surpassed rigorous benchmarks, establishing itself as one of the best companies to work for in the country.
“The Cheesecake Factory is honored to be named to the PEOPLE Companies That Care list for the sixth consecutive year,” said David Overton, Founder, Chairman and CEO of The Cheesecake Factory Incorporated. “Since opening our first restaurant in Beverly Hills in 1978, we have worked to create a very special company culture of doing the right thing and giving back to the communities we serve, and this award is a wonderful acknowledgment of what we continue to strive to create.”
Among The Cheesecake Factory’s signature programs that support its local communities is the Nourish Program whereby the company regularly donates excess food from its restaurants to local non-profits. Through this program the company has donated more than 10 million pounds of food to local non-profits since 2007, including more than 1 million pounds of food in 2025. In addition to helping combat hunger, the company’s Nourish Program donations help reduce greenhouse gas emissions and send less materials to landfills.
Additionally, through the sale of its specially designated cheesecakes, since 2008 The Cheesecake Factory has donated more than $7 million to Feeding America ®, the largest hunger-relief organization in the United States, dedicated to fighting hunger through a network of food banks. And through the Give Back program, sponsored by The Cheesecake Factory Oscar and Evelyn Overton Charitable Foundation, the company’s staff members can volunteer their time for fundraising and community service projects for the charities they care about the most, contributing thousands of volunteer hours to hundreds of charities across the country each year.
In 2026, The Cheesecake Factory was named one of the Fortune "100 Best Companies to Work For ® " for the thirteenth consecutive year.
For more information about The Cheesecake Factory, visit www.TheCheesecakeFactory.com
For career opportunities, visit www.cakecareers.com
About The Cheesecake Factory Incorporated
The Cheesecake Factory is a leader in experiential dining. We are culinary forward and relentlessly focused on hospitality. Delicious, memorable experiences created by passionate people – this defines who we are and where we are going. We currently own and operate 377 restaurants throughout the United States and Canada under brands including The Cheesecake Factory ®, North Italia ®, Flower Child ® and a collection of other FRC brands. Internationally, 36 The Cheesecake Factory ® restaurants operate under licensing agreements. Our bakery division operates two facilities that produce quality cheesecakes and other baked products for our restaurants, international licensees and third-party bakery customers. In 2026, we were named to the FORTUNE Magazine "100 Best Companies to Work For ® " list for the thirteenth consecutive year. To learn more, visit www.thecheesecakefactory.com, www.northitalia.com, www.iamaflowerchild.com and www.foxrc.com.
From Fortune. ©2026 Fortune Media IP Limited. All rights reserved. Used under license. Fortune ® and Fortune 100 Best Companies to Work For ® are registered trademarks of Fortune Media IP Limited and are used under license. Fortune and Fortune Media IP Limited are not affiliated with, and do not endorse products or services of, The Cheesecake Factory Incorporated.
About the PEOPLE Companies That Care List
Great Place To Work selected the 2026 PEOPLE Companies That Care List by gathering and analyzing over 1.3 million confidential survey responses from companies representing more than 7.3 million U.S. employees at Great Place To Work Certified organizations. Of those, nearly 970,000 responses came from employees at companies eligible for the list and these rankings are based on that feedback. Company rankings are derived from 60 employee experience questions within the Great Place To Work Trust Index™ Survey and essays submitted by participating companies. Read the full methodology.
About Great Place to Work ®
As the global authority on workplace culture, Great Place To Work, a UKG company, brings 30 years of groundbreaking research and data to help every place become a great place to work for all. Its proprietary platform and Great Place To Work Model help companies evaluate the experience of every employee, with exemplary workplaces becoming Great Place To Work Certified and receiving recognition on a coveted Best Workplaces list. Visit greatplacetowork.com to learn more.
The Cheesecake Factory staff members from Roseville, CA volunteer at a Give Back program event at their local food bank
ZAÑA, Peru (AP) — Pope Leo XIV on Saturday denounced the “suffering and humiliation” endured by African enslaved people as he made a tangible show of remorse in Peru following his historic apology for the Holy See’s own role in legitimizing the African slave trade in the Americas.
The U.S.-born Leo, whose own family tree includes enslaved people and slave owners, delivered the remarks in the northern Peruvian city of Zaña, a UNESCO-recognized memorial site for slavery and a center of the Afro-Peruvian community today.
Zaña is part of Leo’s former diocese of Chiclayo, and the former Robert Prevost came here often to pray before the relics of a 16th century saint, including the night before his ordination as a bishop. He knows the city and the history of African-descended Peruvians well, and the continued discrimination that Afro-Peruvians face today.
In remarks to the community Saturday, Leo said Zaña “preserves the memory of generations of Africans who were torn from their homes and subjected to slavery.”
“Many endured great suffering and humiliation. Dear brothers and sisters of African descent, today I want to express my affection and closeness to you,” he said.
Zaña, a historic town in Chiclayo province, was recognized by UNESCO in 2017 as a “site of memory of slavery and African cultural heritage.” The recognition was the first of its kind granted to a Peruvian Afro-descendant community or any comparable community along South America’s Pacific Coast, the government says.
Zaña is also home to the sanctuary of St. Turibius of Mogrovejo, the first archbishop of Lima. Mogrovejo is revered here for having denounced abuses against Indigenous and enslaved people by Spanish colonizers, and Leo has made clear on this trip that he modeled his ministry on Mogrovejo’s example.
In addition to having crisscrossed his vast archdiocese on foot and horseback, Mogrovejo learned Indigenous languages and was known for having confirmed St. Martin de Porres, the first Black saint of the Americas and the patron saint of racial harmony, social justice and people of multiracial backgrounds.
“I know that many families in this region suffer because of crime, extortion and insecurity,” Leo said Saturday in the shadow of the Mogrovejo sanctuary. “I am pained at the thought of those who live in fear, of people whose honest labor is under threat and of those who continue to experience discrimination. I hold you in my prayers and ask the Lord to grant you the peace you so deeply need.”
In his first encyclical, “Magnificent Humanity,” Leo made a sweeping apology for the role of past popes in legitimizing slavery in the Americas and failing to condemn it for centuries. It was a reference to the series of 15th-century directives from the Vatican that authorized European sovereigns to conquer Africa and the Americas and enslave non-Christians.
“It is impossible not to feel deep sorrow when contemplating the immense suffering and humiliation endured by so many in stark contrast to their immeasurable dignity as persons infinitely loved by the Lord,” Leo wrote in the encyclical. “For this, in the name of the church, I sincerely ask for pardon.”
The estimated 100,000 African slaves brought to Peru after the arrival of Spanish conquistadores toiled in sugar plantations and silver mines, with some becoming urban artisans. At one point, they and their descendants were more than 40% of Lima’s population.
Blacks now are a small fraction of Peru’s 35 million people. But they have struggled to advance in the more than 170 years since emancipation.
“Historically, the Afro-Peruvian community — much like other Afro-Latin American communities — has faced a twofold form of invisibility: the denial of its demographic and cultural weight in the nation’s formation, and the reduction of its contributions to mere folklore,” said Alejandro Frigerio, researcher at the National Council for Scientific Research of Argentina who focuses on Afro-American religions.
He said Peru had made significant strides in institutional recognition of the community, but “the primary challenge remains ensuring equitable access to rights and eradicating both everyday and institutional racism.”
The 2017 national census recorded 1,311 Zaña residents who identified as Afro-Peruvian, compared with 78,639 across the entire Lambayeque region.
On Saturday, Leo addressed them, saying he was aware that many families in the region are suffering because of crime and extortion.
“I am pained at the thought of those who live in fear, of people whose honest labor is under threat and of those who continue to experience discrimination,” he said. “I hold you in my prayers and ask the Lord to grant you the peace you so deeply need.”
There was a hint on the day Leo arrived in Peru that he would address the legacy of African-descended Peruvians when Susana Baca, the Latin Grammy-winning Afro-Peruvian singer, serenaded him on Lima’s Plaza Mayor.
Baca, arguably the best-known Afro-Peruvian musician, was also Peru’s first Black Cabinet minister and became a leading figure in the campaign to end the discrimination that has long made second-class citizens of Black Peruvians and Peru’s Indigenous peoples.
Known for her velvet voice and barefoot dancing, Baca told The Associated Press that she felt a special connection to Leo because of the importance he has placed on asking forgiveness for past injustices.
“I believe that one of the most important things in the history of Afro-Peruvians is that we did not remain submerged despite our history of suffering,” she said after her barefoot performance on Wednesday. “We are an Afro-Peruvian people who have learned to forgive.”
“And perhaps this is what connects me, in my conscience, to the pope,” she said in an email. “I feel that in all his homilies and teachings, the pope emphasizes the importance of asking for forgiveness and forgiving — that the injustices of many moments in history are less painful if we have the capacity to forgive and to be forgiven.”
Members of Zaña’s Afro-descendant community celebrated the return of Leo, their former bishop, and were particularly proud of Baca’s performance before an American pope with Black ancestors.
“I’m so proud to see an Afro-Peruvian person singing to the pope, and to know that Black blood courses through his veins,” said Felipe Gutierrez, a local chef and poet known as Frontado.
All four of Leo’s maternal great-grandparents were “free people of color” in 19th-century Louisiana census records. As part of the melting pot of French, Spanish, African and Native American cultures in Louisiana, the pope’s maternal ancestors would be considered Creole.
Zaña is home to an Afro-Peruvian museum, which features a rich collection of historical photographs, plantation carts and percussion musical instruments of African origin from Peru, Cuba and Brazil. It also holds records relating to enslaved people and some of the shackles used to restrain them.
One of its walls has photos of the Chicago-born Leo during visits to the town when he was bishop. There are also large framed photographs of Barack Obama, the first Black U.S. president, and South African anti-apartheid leader Nelson Mandela.
“They show us how someone who is Black as we are in Zaña became a president and we’re proud because we all deserve the same rights,” said Gutierrez, wearing a Chicago Bulls shirt with Michael Jordan’s iconic No. 23 on the back.
Winfield contributed from Chiclayo, Peru.
Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.
Pope Leo XIV arrives for a meeting with the Catholic community on the occasion of the closing of the Jubilee Year of Santo Toribio de Mogrovejo at the Shrine of Santo Toribio de Mogrovejo in Zana, Peru, on the ninth day of his twelve-day apostolic journey to South America, Saturday, Nov. 14, 2026. (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini)
Women wait to welcome Pope Leo XIV ahead of his meeting with the Catholic community in Zaña, Peru, Saturday, Nov. 14, 2026. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd)
Pope Leo XIV arrives for a meeting with the Catholic community on the occasion of the closing of the Jubilee Year of Santo Toribio de Mogrovejo at the Shrine of Santo Toribio de Mogrovejo in Zana, Peru, on the ninth day of his twelve-day apostolic journey to South America, Saturday, Nov. 14, 2026. (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini)
Pope Leo XIV arrives for a meeting with the Catholic community on the occasion of the closing of the Jubilee Year of Santo Toribio de Mogrovejo at the Shrine of Santo Toribio de Mogrovejo in Zana, Peru, on the ninth day of his twelve-day apostolic journey to South America, Saturday, Nov. 14, 2026. (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini)
Pope Leo XIV attends a meeting with the Catholic community on the occasion of the closing of the Jubilee Year of Santo Toribio de Mogrovejo at the Shrine of Santo Toribio de Mogrovejo in Zana, Peru, on the ninth day of his twelve-day apostolic journey to South America, Saturday, Nov. 14, 2026. (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini)
Pope Leo XIV is greeted by Peruvian singer Susana Baca during a meeting on the challenges and hopes for the future of the Peruvian people in the square outside Lima's cathedral, on the seventh day of his twelve-day apostolic journey to South America, Thursday, Nov. 12, 2026. (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini)
Pope Leo XIV is greeted by Peruvian singer Susana Baca during a meeting on the challenges and hopes for the future of the Peruvian people in the square outside Lima's cathedral, on the seventh day of his twelve-day apostolic journey to South America, Thursday, Nov. 12, 2026. (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini)
A figurine of a Black Virgin Mary is part of a Nativity scene displayed at the Afro-Peruvian Museum in Zaña, Peru, ahead of Pope Leo XIV's visit to the town to lead a prayer service at the Sanctuary of St. Turibius of Mogrovejo, Friday, Nov. 6, 2026. (AP Photo/Martin Mejia)
Carmen Cossio Aguilar smiles during a tour of the Afro-Peruvian Museum in Zaña, Peru, a hub of Afro-Peruvian culture, ahead of Pope Leo XIV's visit to lead a prayer service at the Sanctuary of St. Turibius of Mogrovejo, Friday, Nov. 6, 2026. (AP Photo/Martin Mejia)
Percussion and other musical instruments are displayed at the Afro-Peruvian Museum in Zaña, Peru, ahead of Pope Leo XIV's visit to the town to lead a prayer service at the Sanctuary of St. Turibius of Mogrovejo, Friday, Nov. 6, 2026. (AP Photo/Martin Mejia)
Pope Leo XIV arrives for a meeting with the university community at Santo Toribio de Mogrovejo Catholic University in Chiclayo, Peru, Friday, Nov. 13, 2026. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd)
Faithful wait for the arrival of Pope Leo XIV on the occasion of his meeting the university community at Santo Toribio de Mogrovejo Catholic University in Chiclayo, Peru', Friday, Nov. 13, 2026. (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini)
Pope Leo XIV meets the university community at Santo Toribio de Mogrovejo Catholic University in Chiclayo, Peru', on the eighth day of his twelve-day apostolic journey to South America, Friday, Nov. 13, 2026. (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini)
Pope Leo XIV waves to the faithful as he arrives for a meeting with the university community at Santo Toribio de Mogrovejo Catholic University in Chiclayo, Peru, Friday, Nov. 13, 2026. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd)
Pope Leo XIV delivers his message during his meeting with the university community at Santo Toribio de Mogrovejo Catholic University in Chiclayo, Peru', Friday, Nov. 13, 2026. (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini)
