Posted on 12/25/2023 9:57:55 AM PST by SeekAndFind
The future of Boston Market is in jeopardy after owner Jignesh Pandya filed for personal bankruptcy on Dec. 8 with the Eastern District of Pennsylvania Bankruptcy Court. The chain, which has over $329,000 in unpaid sales and payroll taxes, also had its headquarters seized by the Colorado Department of Revenue.
Engage Brands, one of the Rohan Group of companies, owned by Pandya of Bucks County, Pennsylvania, purchased Boston Market from affiliates of Sun Capital Partners in 2020, the same year it also acquired Corner Bakery from affiliates of Roark Capital Partners. The Dallas-based bakery, however, filed for Chapter 11 earlier this year and was purchased in June by a Sonic franchisee for $15 million.
Colorado-based Boston Market, which had not returned FastCasual's request for comment by press time, debuted in 1985 and at one time had over 1,200 locations but has shrunk to 300 stores.
In August 2023, the New Jersey Department of Labor and Workforce Development forced the chain to shutter 27 locations after finding multiple violations of workers' rights, including over $600,000 in back wages owed to 314 workers, according to the state of New Jersey.
“With restaurants restaurants across the country, Boston Market needs to set a better example for fair treatment of its workers," Joseph Petrecca, assistant commissioner of NJDOL's Division of Wage and Hour and Contract Compliance, said in a prepared statement.
The chain's restaurants in Connecticut and South Florida have also been shut down due to formal evictions because of unpaid rent, according to TheStreet.
Those aren't the only problems for Boston Market, however, as it faces an $11 million lawsuit from food distributor US Foods as well as a $1 million claim from Ben E. Keith, a food distributor in Texas. Polar Leasing, a refrigeration company, also filed a suit earlier this year in Indiana, claiming Boston Market owed it $338,850.
That’s too bad.
I had bought food at Boston Market around 2019, and had planned to do so again sometime in the future, if they happened to be on the way to my going somewhere.
Was a decent place to eat. Haven’t been there in a while though.
Well, bye.....,.
i’m always surprised when i hear Boston Market is still around ...
Went there all the time in 1999
Did a surprise audit in my Big 6 days near one of their offices in Denver in 1994
No it was NOT them
A contractor related (doing work) to a very famous credit card company out of New York City
But I saw the sign when we arrived on-site in 1994
I like the concept of Boston Market. However, the food is too salty for me.
I didn't live near one, and when work let me stay at a hotel across the street from a Boston Market, I ate there four of the next five days. I could not get enough of it.
We have Boston Market gift cards that are not used up. I'd love to have the restaurants back.
What a sad moment in their company history.
They still exist? All the ones in Tucson went away years ago. Here they’re just another one of those “former restaurants now found in the freezer section”.
Wow, unpaid wages, unpaid suppliers, unpaid landlords, unpaid employees, and unpaid taxes. Then a personal bankruptcy.
Did Jignesh Pandya buy the company to rape it? Or is he just a lousy businessman? What a disaster.
The Boston Market in Mountain View, CA was replaced by a Chipotle years and years ago. I always liked the Boston Market more than Chipotle, but I patronize that location every year or two.
Does the same company sell the Boston Market froze meals in grocery stores. I get one of those occasionally.
I used to work for Rio, the MP3 player people, and they sacked a bunch of the top level execs, and brought in a CAST of idiots. One of these idiots was a guy named John Todd. He was previously with Gateway computer, and before that was a big executive at Boston Market. This guy seemed to be the axe-man that you brought in to ruin companies as he got sued by the SEC because of some shenanigans he pulled while at Gateway, and he almost bankrupted Boston Market before they tossed him out.
So, they’ve been trying to die for a WHILE it seems.
Used to be good, but the quality has declined and the price has gone up. Appears Jignesh and the boys ran it into the ground.
Boston Market was popular and growing. Decision was to purchase all locations from individual owners and then have corporate salaried store managers. Individual owners would have been inspired by their own need to make a profit. Corporate salary managers would make the same amount of money no matter what. Individual franchise ownership would work. Corporate clowns not.
“All the ones in Tucson went away years ago.”
They were big. Two friends I ate with loved the things. Was one up at 22nd and Kolb area and another around 1st or Oracle off of River on the north side. Were probably others. Frequented those two around 2008-09. Had completely forgotten.
Yeah we had a bunch. I think the last one went away like 2018. When they got rid of the ham carver sandwich I kind of lost interest. It was my favorite. The wife would get the 3 sides meal. She’s also addicted to their meatloaf TV dinner thing. I guess we can see the mismanagement continues.
I've seen the pattern of execs you mentioned - they have a track record of failures, yet still get placed into highly compensated positions. It's like putting enron, theranos, and ftx on your resume and come out with a better gig each time.
Isn’t this the third or fourth time Boston Market has gone belly up?
” It was Thanksgiving food, year-round, immediately available to you.”
That’s a good executive summary of their business model, but at the same time, also the likely seeds of its demise. Margins in the fast-food business are very thin, and I have to believe that there is significant food waste in Boston Market’s rotisserie chicken-with-mashed-potatoes-corn-and-all-the-fixins menu. Some of that stuff takes hours to prepare, so it’s got to be done in advance in quantities based on estimated sales. If you guess wrong, and it doesn’t end up selling, a lot is likely thrown away. Very hard to compete with the simpler business models of not only their burger-and-fries competitors but also with the made-to-order pizza sellers and sandwich shops like Subways and Jersey Mike’s.
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