In the event you ever wished to purchase a lobster tank and an industrial freezer, now’s the time.
Tools from greater than 50 Pink Lobster eating places throughout the US was up for public sale on Tuesday, a liquidator mentioned, because the embattled seafood chain’s web site listed dozens of areas as being briefly closed.
The public sale website consists of grainy photos of freezers, ovens, blenders and different objects. A photograph of a tank with stay lobsters appeared within the itemizing for the Pink Lobster in Redding, Calif., together with pictures of a bar with whiskey bottles and a fridge stocked with wine and beer.
The auctions had been scheduled to finish on Thursday, and objects should be picked up on Friday, based on the liquidator, TAGeX Manufacturers. Whoever wins the bid for a selected restaurant will obtain all the things inside it (not together with perishable items and alcohol, the public sale website famous).
Pink Lobster didn’t reply to inquiries Tuesday morning.
Pink Lobster, based mostly in Orlando, Fla., opened its first location in 1968 and now has eating places throughout the US, plus others in Asia and Latin America. Its décor was impressed by Bar Harbor, a coastal city in Maine.
Pink Lobster continues to be an American establishment, nevertheless it has been dropping cash for some time. Final 12 months, its determination to drastically develop an all-you-can-eat shrimp promotion contributed to an $11 million quarterly working loss.
Bloomberg Information reported final month that Pink Lobster was seeking to restructure its debt and contemplating whether or not to file for chapter. The corporate didn’t remark for that article.
For a lot of American households, Pink Lobster has lengthy been an aspirational eating selection, and for some an introduction to seafood. Within the late Nineteen Sixties and ’70s, its brand marketed the restaurant as a cocktail lounge with an oyster bar.
Pink Lobster has additionally filtered into American well-liked tradition, together with within the 1996 Adam Sandler comedy “Glad Gilmore” and the 2016 Beyoncé music “Formation,” through which she sang about taking a romantic associate to the restaurant.
Normal Mills bought the chain in 1970. It was later owned by Darden Eating places, a Normal Mills subsidiary, and was bought by Golden Gate Capital, a non-public fairness agency, in 2014.
Pink Lobster’s largest shareholder since 2020 has been Thai Union Group, a seafood conglomerate based mostly in Thailand. That firm introduced in January that it had determined to exit its Pink Lobster funding. It later mentioned that it had written down its $530 million stake.
Thai Union mentioned in its January announcement that Pink Lobster had been damage by the coronavirus pandemic, increased rates of interest, rising labor and materials prices, and “sustained business headwinds.” It mentioned in a short e mail on Tuesday that it was nonetheless within the means of “exiting its minority funding” and had no additional remark.
One other main shareholder in Pink Lobster is Seafood Alliance, a Belgium-based affiliation of worldwide seafood companies, based on Thai Union. Seafood Alliance didn’t instantly reply to an inquiry.
Victor Mather contributed reporting.
