On the Border Mexican Grill & Cantina has filed for chapter safety, citing strain from inflation and altering buyer habits.
The chain, which is owned by Atlanta-based Argonne Capital Group, filed Tuesday in federal chapter courtroom in northern Georgia. It joins a number of different informal chains which have filed for chapter safety over the past yr, together with Pink Lobster and TGI Fridays.
Why On the Border filed for chapter safety
In courtroom papers, On the Border stated prospects dined out much less in recent times as restaurant inflation outpaced grocery costs. The chain stated rising minimal wages in lots of states additionally added to its prices, and it has struggled to recruit and retain employees.
Final month, On the Border closed 40 areas. It nonetheless operates 60 eating places in 18 states, which can stay open whereas the chapter proceeds. Franchisees run a further 20 eating places within the U.S. and South Korea, the corporate stated.
What’s subsequent for On the Border
On the Border stated it expects to finish a sale of its belongings quickly.
On the Border opened its first restaurant in Dallas in 1982. In 1994, it was acquired by Chili’s proprietor Brinker Worldwide, which started opening franchised areas. By 2001, On the Border had greater than 100 eating places within the U.S. It expanded into South Korea in 2007.
Brinker bought On the Border to Golden Gate Capital in 2010, and Golden Gate bought the chain to Argonne in 2014.
What different restaurant chains have filed
Pink Lobster filed for Chapter 11 chapter in 2024, battling lease and labor prices. In Could, it filed paperwork searching for to renegotiate lease agreements on greater than 100 areas, together with the Bourbonnais and Michigan Metropolis areas.
In September, a chapter courtroom accepted Pink Lobster’s plan to exit Chapter 11, placing it nearer to exiting chapter.
Restaurant chain TGI Fridays filed for chapter safety in November, on the lookout for methods to “make sure the long-term viability” of the informal eating model after closing a lot of its branches.
TGI Fridays Govt Chairman Rohit Manocha in an announcement stated the “main driver of our monetary challenges resulted from COVID-19 and our capital construction.”
In line with CNBC, at the least 10 restaurant chains filed for chapter in 2024, together with Roti and Buca di Beppo.
In the meantime, Chi-Chi’s, a well-liked Mexican restaurant chain from the Nineteen Nineties that had a whole lot of areas throughout the U.S. together with within the Chicago suburbs, introduced in December it is formally making a comeback after greater than twenty years.
