Bennigan's chain to close?

by Marisa McClellan, Posted Jul 29th 2008 @ 11:59AM

According to the Dallas/Ft. Worth NBC affiliate station, Bennigan's, a nationwide restaurant chain with nearly 800 locations, is closing the doors on all their stores, effective immediately. Calls to the the national headquarters, located in Plano, TX, are going unanswered and managers have been asked to call their staff members to tell them not to come in.

Upon hearing that they were shutting down, I placed a call to Philadelphia's local Bennigan's. My call was answered on the second ring, and while there was definitely noise of activity on the other end of the line, the woman who answered my call confirmed that they were closed for business as well.

I've never eaten at a Bennigan's, so I can't speak to the food, but my heart does go out to all the people who will lose their jobs because of this closure. How do the rest of you feel about the sudden closing of this chain?

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Filed Under: Food News, Chefs & Restaurants, Restaurants
Tags: bennigans closing, BennigansClosing, job loss, JobLoss, restaurant chain closing, RestaurantChainClosing

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Reader comments (Page 2 of 2)

7-30-2008 @12:55AM zerocalories said... No more Monte Cristo's.
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7-30-2008 @8:54AM Robert Rohr said... It comes as no surprise. Bennigans was stuck in a time-warp. It was like stepping back into the early 1980's. Fern bars, flair, and cute drinks sort of died out a long time ago. The menu was indistiguishable. Also, some of the neighborhoods where they were located had deteriorated over the years. Some restaurants had really become dirty inside.

Even more so was Steak N Ale. I recently went to a local one that I had not visited since 1973. It was exactly the same! While well maintained, they still had the same pictures on the wall, same menu items, and same decor. It was lunchtime and the only people in the place were retirees having mixed drinks with their lunch. Who does that anymore? That is really 70'ish.

Both restaurants failed to keep pace with the times.
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8-01-2008 @8:20PM Mike said... Yep, as a foodie, I'm torn. The whole chained themed Bourdain quote, TGIMcFunsters definitely did not appeal to me BUT when the majority of the people you hang out with aren't foodies and they think the Olive Garden is a good italian restaurant then Bennigans was nice for a cheap meal. My wife and I with our infant son could get an appetizer and a meal and that would feed all of us for relatively inexpensive price with a coupon. With that said, our relatively small dining budget tries to go to local non chain sites. Hopefully this will become an opportunity for all those people to go on to something bigger and better.
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8-04-2008 @7:07PM Hungover Gourmet said... Couldn't tell you the last time I ate at one but Bennigan's will always have a soft spot in my liver. It was the first place I ever got served -- at the age of 16.5 -- thanks to my older brother's drivers license.
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