Why did HomeTown Buffet close? Here's what happened to HomeTown Buffet and different once-popular buffet brands.
Why did HomeTown Buffet close? What came about to the all-you-can-eat vacation spot? The lack of this restaurant chain has on no account long past ignored online. “S—t ain’t been proper since they closed down HomeTown Buffet,” one individual tweeted in Sept. 2020. “I act like I’m OK, however deep down, I leave out HomeTown Buffet,” some other Twitter consumer wrote in May 2021. And in Nov. 2021, a 3rd user tweeted, “I haven’t absolutely been myself since HomeTown Buffet closed.”
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According to Restaurant Business, the COVID-19 crisis has hit buffet manufacturers exhausting. The mother or father corporate of Sweet Tomatoes and Souplantation has gone into liquidation, and the two largest Golden Corral franchisees pursued debt protection. The pandemic was once also the demise knell, it sort of feels, for HomeTown Buffet and different chains underneath the Fresh Acquisitions umbrella.
HomeTown’s mum or dad corporate as soon as had 650 locations—but then got here the bankruptcies
Restaurant Business reported on HomeTown Buffet and its sibling chains—Tahoe Joe’s, Old Country Buffet, Ryan’s, Fire Mountain, and Furr’s—in April 2021.
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The publication famous that former mum or dad company Buffets Inc. had 650 places in 2006. Amid the recession of the mid-2000s, alternatively, Buffets declared bankruptcy in 2008 and again in 2012. By the time FMP Management bought the company (then known as Ovation Brands) in 2015, the corporate most effective had three hundred places, and it declared bankruptcy once more in 2016. FMP also scooped up Furr’s in 2015 after that chain declared chapter the year prior.
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All final HomeTown Buffet locations closed all the way through the pandemic
When the pandemic began, Fresh Acquisitions—once a subsidiary of FMP Management—had 90 eating places between HomeTown and the other manufacturers. But by means of April 2021, best six locations had been open, all of that have been Tahoe Joe’s steakhouses, in keeping with Restaurant Business. In June 2020, FMP Management “ceased operations,” entering bankruptcy itself.
Amid the upheaval, VitaNova Brands started managing Fresh Acquisitions’ eating places in Jan. 2021, and Fresh Acquisitions went into bankruptcy in April 2021. “As with virtually every one of our peers, buffet eating places took the brunt of the loss of sales all over the pandemic and as such, the path to luck calls for exhausting alternatives to be made, together with the clarification of our total footprint,” mentioned VitaNova Brands CEO and co-founder Jason Kemp, in keeping with Nation’s Restaurant News.
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Breaking information: Wildly well-liked HomeTown Buffet in Salinas rapidly closes doors, no caution to more or less 30 staff, told to go back this afternoon for ultimate take a look at.. pic.twitter.com/70G4Z4DXhC
— Felix Cortez (@FelixKSBW) May 23, 2019Article continues beneath commercial
The company that purchased Fresh Acquisitions’ buffet brands has “no speedy plans” to reopen HomeTown Buffet
In Oct. 2021, BBQ Holdings—the father or mother company of the fish fry restaurant chain Famous Dave’s—received a bankruptcy public sale for Fresh Acquisitions LLC, agreeing to pay $5.2 million in the deal. That deal meant BBQ Holdings used to be the new owner of the ultimate Tahoe Joe’s locations and the intellectual property for HomeTown Buffet, Old Country Buffet, Ryan’s, and the different buffet chains.
But BBQ Holdings CEO Jeff Crivello said a day after the auction that the buffet eating places would stay closed. “We have no instant plans to reopen any of the buffet brands,” he mentioned, stories Restaurant Business. “Those are just IP that got here along the transaction.”
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