Veteran Baton Rouge restaurateur T.J. Moran has died at the age of 84. Moran was a leading figure in the local restaurant industry. Before his retirement several years ago, Moran’s company, TJM Restaurant Management, owned and operated several of Baton Rouge’s best-known restaurants, including TJ Ribs, Ruffino’s, Ruth’s Chris steakhouse and Ninfa’s Mexican Restaurant. Moran was Ruth’s Chris first franchisee and, at one point, its largest, with restaurants in nine states. In recent years Moran had sold the restaurants off to his partners or family members.
“TJ’s vision was about figuring out what the customer wanted,” says Louisiana Restaurant Association President Stan Harris, who worked with Moran for 30 years until joining the LRA in 2007. “His motto was, ‘We need to try to find a way to make it better every day.’”
Moran, a native of Chicago, came to Louisiana in the early 1970s and originally worked in real estate development. He opened Ruth’s Chris on Constitution Avenue in 1977. A decade later, he opened TJ Ribs. In the 1990s, he opened Ninfa’s and Ruffino’s, which was originally called DiNardo’s.
“His passion for our industry was unparalleled,” says Ruffin Rodrigue, who worked with Moran for 12 years at Ruffino’s before buying the restaurant from him with Peter Sclafani in 2009. “He understood what it took to run a successful restaurant. He was the best.”
In addition to running a successful restaurant management company, Moran was a generous philanthropist. He was heavily involved with Pat’s Coats for Kids, the Children’s Miracle Network, the Junior Diabetes Research Foundation and the Mary Bird Perkins Cancer Center, to which he donated $1 million in 2011.
“He did a lot of things for people without ever seeking credit for it,” Harris says. “He was a great guy.”
—Stephanie Riegel
