Tuesday, July 29, 2008

Goodbye Bennigan's

Still saving up that money to buy yourself a Bennigan's franchise? Well it may be time to look elsewhere, because as of today, it looks like Bennigan's is a thing of the past.



According to a Chicago Tribune article, Bennigan's parent company, S & A Restaurant Corp, filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy and suddenly closed seemingly all of its corporate owned restaurants.

How sudden was this move? So sudden that they didn't even tell their employees, all of whom showed up for work to only find out that their jobs were no longer on the menu.

I haven't been to a Bennigan's since high school, and always thought the same of it as I do other casual dining restaurants - but this has to hit its (former) employees particularly hard. In a time where the economy is in the tank, I can only hope everyone hurt by this lands squarely on their feet.

3 comments:

The Ex said...

Steak & Ale is going out of business along with Bennigans. Sad.

Anonymous said...

I work for a company that manages and tracks gift cards, and I've been following retailers filing for bankruptcy on savvywallet.com. Ponderosa and Bonanza are still accepting Metromedia gift cards. I'm not sure about franchise owned Bennigans's. My advice? Go spend your gift cards, we simply do not know how long they will be accepting them. Don't forget The Sharper Image incident: $25m in unused gift cards.

Anthony said...

Good call Austin! Don't let that money go to waste.