West Lebanon
It wasn’t a robbery: D’Angelo’s corporate owner was closing the chain restaurant, effective immediately, the man told Monmaney, according to her supervisor, general manager Jud Bean.
Told to vacate the premises, Monmaney went to her car in the parking lot, where she called Bean in tears, and posted on her Facebook page: “During my open this morning a man from corporate came in and CLOSED DOWN OUR STORE. No reason, no warning. In the middle of my open he put this sign on my door and took everything, including my key. I am shook,” Monmaney wrote.
She posted a photo of the sign she took with her phone, which announced without explanation, “This location is now closed. Thank you for your patronage.”
“Still sitting in the parking lot bawling,” Monmaney wrote a few minutes later in a second Facebook post after a friend asked if she was “okay.”
And so it happened like a dawn blitzkreig operation at 95 D’Angelo and Papa Gino’s restaurants throughout New England as the parent company, PGHC Holdings Inc., of Dedham, Mass., sought bankruptcy protection on Monday. At the same time the company, which formerly had been controlled by Boston private equity firm Bunker Hill, announced it was being sold to another private equity firm, Wynnchurch Capital, which has had a claim of more than $50 million in secured debt against the company, according to a spokesman for the seller.
“They asked for her keys and told her to leave. She said she’d like to take the trash out, but he said, ‘no, just leave it there,’ ” Bean, of Canaan, said in regard to Monmaney in an interview on Monday.
Monmaney did not respond to a request for comment.
Bean, who worked at D’Angelo for 15 years, said Sunday was his day off from work and he did not receive any official word of the store closing until 4 p.m. that afternoon, when the district manager called him.
“He said, ‘I guess you’ve heard. I don’t know a whole lot about it. We were told not to contact anyone,’ ” Bean said the district manager explained, adding Bean was “more than welcome” to apply for a job at the nearest D’Angelo in Concord.
In a news release, PGHC Holdings said the bankruptcy filing and sale of the company “would significantly strengthen the chains’ financial resources, allowing PGHC to remodel and modernize their 141 company-owned restaurants,” as well as help it “open additional restaurants throughout New England.”
Although PGHC Holdings said that all of the D’Angelo and Papa Gino’s locations that were closed were “under-performing restaurants,” Bean said sales at the West Lebanon location have been up every month this year except one and had been up for the two prior consecutive years.
“Before I took it over, they were losing money,” he said.
The sudden closing of D’Angelo triggered an eruption of comments on the Upper Valley (VT/NH) Facebook page, with people expressing anger over the way corporate owner PGHC Holdings handled the abrupt closing on Sunday without giving advance word to employees.
Spokesman Rich Wilner of Sitrick & Associates in New York said PGHC Holdings “couldn’t say anything until the sales agreement with finalized late Sunday night … it’s unfortunate, but that’s the way it happened,” and called the lack of advance warning “not unique in a Chapter 11 sale.”
On Monday, as complaints about the D’Angelo and Papa Gino’s closings spread on social media, Corey Wendland, chief financial officer of PGHC Holdings, issued a statement via email.
“We regret having to abruptly close the restaurants without notice but were unable to share information until the proposed sale transaction was finalized,” Wendland said in the statement. “Please know that every team member affected was asked to reapply for positions in remaining restaurants, and some are already starting at new locations within the next week. We hope to place even more people in the coming days.”
The closing of D’Angelo Grilled Sandwiches along the Route 12A corridor in West Lebanon is the second vacancy in the four-tenant occupancy building between Interchange Drive and Airport Road. The space adjacent to D’Angelo has been vacant for more than three years since RadioShack closed.
Bruce Waters, a commercial real estate agent with Lang McLaughry Commercial Real Estate in West Lebanon, said he leased out the space to D’Angelo 23 years ago; it formerly was the location of Brown Furniture before it moved across the street to Interchange Drive.
Lebanon’s real estate records show the parcel and building, which is assessed at $2.3 million, is owned by CT Brown & Family LLC, but Waters said Citizens Bank holds a long-term master lease on the building and sublets to other tenants, which besides D’Angelo includes the AT&T Wireless store. Citzens Bank occupies the majority of the building.
“Parking is a bit of a problem there,” said Waters, who no longer represents the property for commercial leasing. He said he expects the space, perhaps combined with the adjacent vacant space formerly occupied by RadioShack, should be able to attract another eatery as a tenant.
In its bankruptcy filing, filed in court in Delaware, PGHC listed liabilities of between $50 to $100 million and assets of between zero and $50,000. The company listed fewer than 50 creditors, the largest being the Hartford Life Insurance Co. with $27.9 million in unsecured mezzanine debt, Brookside Mezzanine Fund with $12 million in unsecured mezzanine debt and Sysco Boston LLC, a food distributor to the restaurant industry, with $5.5 million owed in trade debt.
In January, a group of investors reached a deal to acquire all the stock of PGHC Holdings in a two-step transaction for a total of about $23 million, but that deal subsequently fell through later in the year.
At the time that agreement was announced, a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission reported that D’Angelo had 93 company-owned restaurants in addition to 31 franchised locations and three venue licensees, while Papa Gino’s had 148 company-owned restaurants and one venue licensee.
Bunker Hill, the former owner of PGHC Holdings, says on its website that it “exited” its ownership in PGHC after “an extended investment period of 13 years.” Bunker Hill said the two restaurant chains served more than 50 million customers each year.
Commenters on Facebook expressed hope that, given the tight labor shortage in the Upper Valley, particularly in the restaurant sector, the laid-off employees will quickly find new jobs.
In fact, Bean, the former general manager of D’Angelo in West Lebanon, said he already has landed a new job within 24 hours of getting the news on Sunday.
Upon learning he lost his job, Bean said, he immediately “applied to a whole bunch of places” and on Monday accepted an offer to become a night manager in training at the Hannaford supermarket in West Lebanon.
“They were excited to get me,” he said.
Bean said he won’t have much time off between jobs. He starts at Hannaford today.
John Lippman can be reached at jlippman@vnews.com.
