99 Restaurants Cease Operations

[john237]

PA NJ and CT I think. Also closing O'Charleys.

Economy getting better, I think not.

Tip of the iceburg folks.

[Sandwich_Sister]

The O'Charleys in Orlando is still open and operating. It's awful though, both in food and service.

[Bob Loblaw]

not saying that the economy *is* getting better, just that restaurants go under with some frequency, there are better indexes out there.

[cwdonald]

They are a late arriver to the Philadelphia area, and were not that successful. They built a restaurant in Warrington on 611, and were "reasonably" busy... but it sounds like they did not meet their targets. It may speak more to their knowledge of the Philadelphia market than it does about their viability.

Interestingly along the same 611 corridor another chain restaurant recently failed, Houlihans. So either this area might be saturated, or people are rejecting the quality of chain restaurants.

[ospreycove]

The banks are reluctant to face the HUGE commercial real estate non- performing loans. Thus it complicates lease re-negotiations for restaurants and other retailers. Once the banks are forced to recognize this enormous problem, we will see a flood of closings.

[cheesewit]

They're only closing FIVE 99 Restaurants and 11 O'Charley's. There are 339 (combined) remaining.

[cheesewit]

I contacted the company and yes, they have closed all PA and NJ stores but the company has not ceased operations completely.

[john237]

It makes no sense to close a group of restaurants the week before Christmas. I'll make a predication here, you'll see more closing soon.

It's not as though the leases were up on all 5 units at once.

Closing a restaurant like that does not come without major expenses, there's leases to negotiate out of, there's utilities, taxes, insurance.

[barryg]

It might make a lot of sense to close a restaurant and take the losses in this tax year instead of next.

A lot of chains overexpanded when credit was cheap. This is tied in with the larger economy, but I'm with Bob that chain restaurants closing in the deep suburbs is not necessarily a strong economic indicator.

[barryg]

Never even heard of it until I saw the closing announcements.