In the event you ever wished to purchase a lobster tank and an industrial freezer, now’s the time.
Tools from greater than 50 Purple Lobster eating places throughout the US was up for public sale on Tuesday, a liquidator stated, because the embattled seafood chain’s web site listed dozens of areas as being briefly closed.
The public sale web site consists of grainy footage of freezers, ovens, blenders and different gadgets. A photograph of a tank with reside lobsters appeared within the itemizing for the Purple 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 gadgets have to be picked up on Friday, based on the liquidator, TAGeX Manufacturers. Whoever wins the bid for a specific restaurant will obtain the whole lot inside it (not together with perishable items and alcohol, the public sale web site famous).
Purple Lobster didn’t reply to inquiries Tuesday morning.
Purple Lobster, primarily based 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.
Purple Lobster continues to be an American establishment, nevertheless it has been dropping cash for some time. Final 12 months, its determination to drastically increase an all-you-can-eat shrimp promotion contributed to an $11 million quarterly working loss.
Bloomberg Information reported final month that Purple 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, Purple Lobster has lengthy been an aspirational eating selection, and for some an introduction to seafood. Within the late Sixties and ’70s, its emblem marketed the restaurant as a cocktail lounge with an oyster bar.
Purple Lobster has additionally filtered into American in style tradition, together with within the 1996 Adam Sandler comedy “Comfortable Gilmore” and the 2016 Beyoncé tune “Formation,” wherein she sang about taking a romantic associate to the restaurant.
Basic Mills bought the chain in 1970. It was later owned by Darden Eating places, a Basic Mills subsidiary, and was bought by Golden Gate Capital, a non-public fairness agency, in 2014.
Purple Lobster’s largest shareholder since 2020 has been Thai Union Group, a seafood conglomerate primarily based in Thailand. That firm introduced in January that it had determined to exit its Purple Lobster funding. It later stated that it had written down its $530 million stake.
Thai Union stated in its January announcement that Purple Lobster had been damage by the coronavirus pandemic, larger rates of interest, rising labor and materials prices, and “sustained trade headwinds.” It stated in a quick e-mail on Tuesday that it was nonetheless within the strategy of “exiting its minority funding” and had no additional remark.
One other main shareholder in Purple 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.
