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The Bennigan’s restaurant chain is closing down. According to multiple reports, Bennigan’s restaurants have shut down as of 7am this morning. It’s widely expected that the company will file for bankruptcy protection.

Bennigan’s was founded in 1976 and has about 300 locations. Bennigan’s is run by Metromedia Restaurant Group, which is heavily in debt to GE Capital. The company recently missed a repayment to GE.

Independently-owned franchise locations remain open.

“Business has been really slow,” said Karen Kohn, 22, a bartender at the Bennigan’s on East Colonial Drive. “We were getting prepared for [the closing],” she said.

Assistant Manager Cory Brumfield knows how this type of shutdown works.

“I went through this when Chi-Chi’s Restaurant closed down a while back,” told the Daily Herald. “They give you no notice and just shut their doors.”

Throughout the country, Bennigan’s managers are showing up at the restaurants in order to put signs on the door telling customers not to bother waiting around.

Bennigan’s spokeswoman Leah Templeton said Bennigan’s and Steak and Ale restaurants – both of which are owned by Plano, Texas-based Metromedia Restaurant Group – have filed for bankruptcy, along with the holding company S&A Restaurant Corp.

But not all stores that use the Bennigan’s and Steak and Ale names have filed for Chapert 7 bankruptcy, Templeton said in a statement. Franchise locations are not named as debtors in the bankruptcy filing and thus are not affected, she said.

The statement said a trustee would determine “future decisions regarding the affairs of the debtor companies.”

CBS 2 Legal Analyst Irv Miller explains that Chapter 7 bankruptcy means the company is being liquidated, as opposed to Chapter 11 bankruptcy, in which a company tries to reorganize and remain in business.

Miller said a Chapter 7 filing usually means a company has “major league debt,” and it is unlikely that employees would get their last paycheck. He said someone could conceivably buy the assets and reopen the full Bennigan’s chain, but that would only be after a long, drawn out court process.

The bankruptcy filing does not affect other two restaurant chains owned by Metromedia, Ponderosa and Bonanza Steakhouse, Templeton said in the statement.

The manager of a Bennigan’s in Calumet City told CBS 2 Tuesday morning that he was informed of the shutdown from his regional manager at 12:10 a.m. today in a phone call.

Calls to other Bennigan’s locations in Chicago confirm that the doors were locked Tuesday morning, and that managers have been showing up to put signs in the doors.

One employee who answered the phone at the Bennigan’s at 150 S. Michigan Ave. downtown tells CBS 2 News that she learned after midnight that there is a shutdown, and said she has heard is national in scope.

The general managers say the news comes as a total shock to them and say there was no warning.

Workers at two other area Bennigan’s did answer the phone this morning, but when asked, said they had no comment and hung up.

CBS 2 sister station WFOR-TV, Miami, reported that Bennigan’s had shut down locations across Florida. CBS stations also confirmed that locations in Dallas and New Jersey were closing.

But franchise-owned restaurants said they remained open for business as usual, according to a published report in the Northwest Indiana Times.

Franchise owner Larry Birski told the newspaper his locations at the Railcats Stadium in Gary, Ind., and in Highland, Hobart, Elkhart, and Angola, Ind., were all open for business as usual.

The newspaper reported that the franchise operators knew about the corporate-owned closures.

The Wall Street Journal reported recently that the Metromedia Restaurant Group violated several terms of a lending agreement with GE Capital Solutions. The company prepared a bankruptcy filing, the newspaper reported.

Bennigan’s was founded in 1976. The restaurant has locations in 32 states.

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