Nearly 20 high street restaurant chains, including Frankie and Benny’s and Chiquito, will close permanently tomorrow.
The sites will close after their last day of trading on Saturday May 27.
The restaurant group (TRG), which owns both the Italian American and Tex-Mex chains, expects to save around £5million by closing its ‘loss-making restaurants’ when it announced the closure of 35 locations earlier this year.
Earlier this month, the group announced that it had advanced its intention to close the sites after negotiating the exit of a number of contacts earlier than planned.
This weekend, 12 Frankie and Benny locations will close, four Chiquito and only one Firejacks will close.
This brings the total number of restaurants closed this month to 23 – six Frankie and Benny restaurants closed earlier this month.
These closures included sites in Blackpool, Chesterfield, Tamworth and Tunbridge Wells.
A Restaurant Group spokesperson told the Mirror: “We announced a review of our leisure area in March and have made the difficult decision to exit some of our Frankie and Benny’s and Chiquito locations.
“We are working closely with our relevant teams and will seek to redeploy our colleagues to sites neighboring our domain where possible.”
The restaurant group currently operates 410 locations across the UK, including Frankie and Benny’s, Chiquito, Wagamamas, Brunning & Price and Coast to Coast brands.
Even with the closures, the group said it had made “good progress” in its recent cost-cutting efforts, with Wagas sales up 9% in the four weeks to April 30.
In fact, things are going so well with the Japanese restaurant that it plans to open eight new locations in the UK next year.
This is up from the five new sites originally planned.
The Restoration Group is not the only chain to have closed sites in recent years.
Popular casual dining chains such as Bella Italia, Zizzi’s Pizza Express and Wahaca have all had to close locations due to financial issues.
Full list of restaurants closing tomorrow
At Frankie and Benny’s
- Aberdeen
- Birmingham-Plaza
- Carmarthen
- Eastleigh
- Feltham
- Leeds
- Lenton
- Livingston
- Norwich-Riverside
- Peterborough
- Peterborough – West Pavilions
- tap low
small
- Leeds
- Lenton
- Peterborough
- Rochester
Firejacks
