Comments on: Bennigan’s: Franchise Owners Shocked by Bankruptcy, Closings

By: File Bankruptcy

File Bankruptcy — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 18:26:00 +0000

So, what will happen to the deep fried Monte Cristo sandwiches?

In all seriousness, what does the above article mean to the franchisee’s?

This looks a little complex, especially considering bankruptcy changes everything!

By: MIke

MIke — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 15:35:30 +0000

There is a golden opportunity for Mr. Briski and the FOA to offer franchises and financing for new franchisees. Why not buy up the corporate-owned locations and re-open? You could re-tool to your specifications, update the image, and bring in the “right” kind of people, whatever would benefit the brand value. Especially for current owners. Bennigan’s Corporate office did a disservice to the current independent owners. My local restaurant closed, taking with it my wife’s favorite MonteCristo sandwich. The rallying cry: “Save the MonteCristo!”

mdcnet1@gmail.com

By: michael webster

michael webster — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 23:40:58 +0000

Sean, this is just a standard way of doing business which foreign to most individuals who think that there is some integrity to paying all your bills.

S&A Restaurant had all their corporate stores individually incorporate.

In the 40 store bankruptcy, we will find all the locations that are crappy.

Just one more thing to look for in your pre-investigation due diligence checklist. Corporate stores individually incorporated means franchisor has plans at some time to shut them down individually.

Do you think that some of these stores took an a whole lot of debt recently – for items that went to other non bankrupt stores?

Jest asking

By: sean

sean — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 22:19:15 +0000

Michael:
Are you suggesting that the franchisor was going to sell anyway and this is just a way of casting off that which the buyer did not want to pay for?
Is this sort of like the Roy Snowden philosophy “The assets I shall sell, the rest can go to…”

By: Austin Chu

Austin Chu — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 21:45:51 +0000

I work for a company that manages and tracks gift cards and I’ve been following retailers filling for bankruptcy. 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.

-Also, you can file a claim. Call this number for more details: 1-800-727-8355 and press 2

By: Michael Webster

Michael Webster — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 21:03:41 +0000

What I think is that a) the franchisor is not bankrupt, b) the trademarks were assigned, and c) the landlords of those restaurants are some annoyed to be dealing with mountains of rotting food that the cannot deal with!