California’s Beloved Curry House Chain Suddenly Shuts Down
By Ryan General
February 26, 2020
A Japanese American restaurant chain shocked its managers, employees and regular patrons with the sudden closure of all its branches.
Curry House mysteriously shut all of its restaurants down on Monday without giving anyone in its workforce any advance notice.
Workers were informed that their final paychecks would be made available to pick up at a later date in signs posted outside the restaurants, reports the Los Angeles Times.
The website for Curry House USA has already been brought down, indicating that the closure might not be temporary.
Curry House’s closure has ignited a flurry of sad posts from avid customers on social media, with some calling it “Curry House Massacre” and the “Brown Wedding.”
In an interview with Newsweek, 22-year-old Theadore Balaschak shared how he and his fellow employees found out that the restaurant was closing.
“It caught all of us off guard,” Balaschak was quoted as saying. “From what I heard from my co-workers it had to do with the investment firm that bought Curry House last year—one of the people from corporate was talking to our manager and, apparently, he said that in order for them to make a profit off Curry House it would have taken two-and-a-half years to make $1.”
According to Balaschak, the employees were contacted on Monday morning, informing them that they were out of a job.
“It was really tragic seeing that everything was already being thrown away,” the former employee shared. “We were open the night before and yet moving people came at 6 a.m—they knew before any of us did that we were out of a job.”
Formerly owned by House Food America, Curry House was purchased by CH Acquisitions, LLC over a year ago. The same year, Curry House’s management was turned over to Food Management Partners Inc., a restaurant investment firm that was later involved in a fraud lawsuit.
In the case that remains pending, three co-founders and another executive of FMP SA Management Group LLC — reportedly an affiliate of Food Management Partners Inc — were accused of fraud and civil conspiracy, San Antonio Express News reports.
Chicago-based investment group River North Furr’s LLC alleged that executives from an FMP affiliate spent $12 million in business earnings on “exotic cars, boats, homes and foreign travel.”
Feature Image via Yelp
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