True Food Kitchen, which arrived in San Diego more than a decade ago touting its \u201cgood for you\u201d menu, has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and is closing a dozen stores across the country, including its restaurant at Westfield UTC.<\/p>\n
The Arizona-based chain\u2019s first San Diego restaurant, located in the Fashion Valley center, is among 34 restaurants across 14 states that will remain open. The final day of service for the UTC restaurant was Sunday, which was when the company formaly filed for bankruptcy protection.<\/p>\n
At the time the first True Food Kitchen opened in San Diego, in 2012, then executive chef Michael Stebner sought to distance the brand from typical \u201chealth food.\u201d Instead, he said the menu took its inspiration from the anti-inflammatory food pyramid developed by author Dr. Andrew Weil, then a partner in the True Food restaurant chain.<\/p>\n
Menu items like edamame dumplings, teriyaki quinoa bowls, and spaghetti squash casserole were meant to entice diners, not only for their flavor, but their healthful ingredients and preparation.<\/p>\n
In 2018, Oprah Winfrey raised the restaurant\u2019s profile with her decision to make a \u201csignificant equity investment\u201d in the chain and join its board of directors. But it wasn\u2019t enough to forestall the company\u2019s financial struggles, as it faced \u201csignificant management turnover\u201d at the same it was expanding its footprint, said Nathan Cook, the company\u2019s chief restructuring officer, in a bankruptcy court filing on Monday.<\/p>\n
\u201cUnder successive leadership teams, the company invested capital outside its core market areas and in new product lines and restaurant concepts that were ultimately unsuccessful and outside of the company\u2019s core mission and menu,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n
Once the pandemic hit, Cook said, the chain experimented with ghost kitchens and an off-site kitchen for delivery service to cope with the shutdown of in-person dining, but those moves only led to still more staffing issues.<\/p>\n
\u201cAdditionally, while many of the restaurants are profitable and occupy highly desirable locations, several restaurants have struggled,\u201d Cook added. \u201cSome are in areas with lower-than-anticipated foot and driving traffic, while others were impacted by changing market forces and demographics that led to steady decreases in profitability over time.\u201d<\/p>\n
As part of the bankruptcy process, True Food Kitchen says it will pursue a court-supervised sale process to find a long-term partner \u201cwith the resources and mission alignment to support the brand\u2019s future.\u201d<\/p>\n
San Diego restaurant consultant John Gordon suspects several forces drove the bankruptcy filing, among them costly leases in upscale areas, he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s ultimately sales and profits that drive a closure, and I\u2019ve talked to numerous people who pointed out that many of their restaurants are all in very high-rent locations,\u201d Gordon said. \u201cThat\u2019s a fixed expense, and a restaurant has to turn enough sales to cover that rent. When you go into such expensive locations, it produces a difficult financial burden to make those restaurants profitable.\u201d<\/p>\n
Gordon also thinks that many diners aren\u2019t entirely clear on just what kind of food is offered at True Food Kitchen.<\/p>\n
\u201cTheir \u2018better for you\u2019 menu options are confusing to customers and might not be the most popular,\u201d he said. \u201cThat has retarded unit sales because of consumer unfamiliarity with it. So what the heck does that mean? It goes beyond the traditional restaurant themes \u2014 brewhouse, steakhouse, Italian restaurant; it\u2019s none of those things.\u201d<\/p>\n
It does make sense, though, that the Fashion Valley location is remaining open, Gordon added. Because he lives nearby, he goes frequently to the east end of the center where there are a number of dining choices like Cheesecake Factory and North Italia, and True Food always appears to be busy, he said.<\/p>\n
As for the chain\u2019s future, Gordon expects that it will not be easy finding a new buyer given the financial struggles many restaurants face, from rising labor and product costs to a growing tendency for households to trim their dining budgets.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere aren\u2019t that many brands doing well, and we still have too many damn restaurants in the country right now, so selling that will be very difficult,\u201d Gordon said. \u201cWhatever debt they have on the books, they\u2019ll want to cram it down and get the bank holders to surrender the value because it\u2019s now considered a troubled brand.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"True Food Kitchen, which arrived in San Diego more than a decade ago touting its \u201cgood for you\u201d…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":487471,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[387,421,181,412,74,76,75,420,1696],"class_list":["post-487470","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-diego","tag-business","tag-food-and-drink","tag-latest-headlines","tag-restaurants","tag-san-diego","tag-san-diego-headlines","tag-san-diego-news","tag-things-to-do","tag-top-stories-sdut"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/487470","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=487470"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/487470\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/487471"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=487470"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=487470"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=487470"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}