Joe’s Crab Shack, which opened to much fanfare in June 2013 — including hundreds of people waiting in line overnight to be the among the first customers through the door — has closed down.
Joe’s served its final customers last night.
Workers were at the restaurant this morning dismantling the interior and packing furniture and fixtures into trucks.
Company media representatives could not immediately be reached for comment.
Patrons who dined at the Riverhead location last night posted on the restaurant’s Facebook page that wait staff there reported running out of food and told customers they were informed yesterday that it would be their last day because the restaurant was closing for good that night.
Ignite Restaurant Group Inc., the publicly traded company that owns Joe’s Crab Shack has been struggling. The value of its stock plummeted from around $19 per share in the summer of 2013, to 82 cents per share at Friday’s stock market close.
Ignite operates more than 130 Joes and more than 20 Brick House Tavern + Tap restaurants in 30 states. Merrit said in the conference call that more than 30 percent of the company’s sales were in Texas.
In an investor conference call announcing second-quarter results, Ignite Restaurant Group president and CEO Robert Merritt said the company’s restaurants in the Northeast “continue to perform poorly.” The results reflect the company’s “attempt to transition the brand to a more upscale, the Joe’s brand in particular, to a more upscale casual dining environment, which frankly the consumer didn’t respond well to,” he said, according to a call transcript. “So we’re taking steps to reverse that.”
Joe’s has already closed several other locations in the New York metro area market.
Joe’s Crab Shack is the second restaurant to fail at that 7,000-square-foot location. Boulder Creek Steakhouse a small-chain restaurant shut down in 2011. In all, Boulder Creek shut down 9 of its 10 locations.
The Riverhead Centre shopping plaza where the restaurant pad is located already has one large vacancy where a Waldbaum’s supermarket was located since the shopping plaza opened up more than a decade ago.
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