26 May 2023 , 08:06
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Nearly 20 high-street restaurant chains, including Frankie and Benny's and Chiquito, will be closing their doors for good tomorrow.
The sites will close after their last day of trading on Saturday, May 27.
The Restaurant Group (TRG) which owns both the American Italian and Tex Mex chains, expects it will save around £5million by closing its "loss-making restaurants" when it announced the closure of 35 sites earlier this year.
At the beginning of this month, the group announced that it had brought forward plans to shut the sites after it negotiated to exit a number of contacts ahead of schedule.
This weekend, 12 Frankie and Benny sites will close, four Chiquito, and a single Firejacks will close.
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This takes the total number of restaurants closed his month to 23 - six Frankie and Benny's restaurants closed earlier this month.
These closures included sites in Blackpool, Chesterfield, Tamworth, and Tunbridge Wells.
A Restaurant Group spokesperson told the Mirror: "We announced a review of our leisure estate in March and made the difficult decision to exit some of our Frankie and Benny's and Chiquito sites.
"We are working closely with our impacted teams and will look to redeploy colleagues to neighbouring sites across our wider estate wherever possible."
The Restaurant Group currently runs 410 venues across the UK which includes the brands Frankie and Benny's, Chiquito, Wagamamas, Brunning & Price and Coast to Coast.
Even with the closures, the Group said it had made "good progress" on its recent cost-cutting efforts with the sales from Wagas growing by 9% over the four weeks to April 30.
In fact, things are going so well with the Japanese restaurant it plans to open eight new sites in the UK next year.
This is up from the five new sites it had originally planned.
The Restaurant Group are not the only chain to close sites over the last few years.
Popular casual dining chains such as Bella Italia, Zizzi's Pizza Express and Wahaca have all had to close sites due to finances.
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Full list of restaurants closing tomorrow
Frankie and Benny's
- Aberdeen
- Birmingham - Plaza
- Carmarthen
- Eastleigh
- Feltham
- Leeds
- Lenton
- Livingston
- Norwich - Riverside
- Peterborough
- Peterborough - Pavilions West
- Taplow
Chiquitos
- Leeds
- Lenton
- Peterborough
- Rochester
Firejacks
- Basildon