Bob Evans to close 20 restaurants

Bob Evans Farms has announced it will shut down 20 restaurants over the next year, most of them within the next month.

The locations of the restaurants targeted for closure were not revealed. They represent less than 4 percent of the 564 company-owned and franchise restaurants that operate in 19 states, primarily in the Midwest, mid-Atlantic and Southeast regions of the U.S.

The 20 restaurants “were not meeting expectations” despite efforts to improve their performance, Bob Evans Chief Financial Officer Mark Hood said in a release. The New Albany, Ohio-based company will offer affected employees positions in nearby restaurants “where possible,” and will offer severance to both full- and part-time employees when relocation is not possible, Bob Evans officials said.

There are 22 restaurants in the Dayton area, and more than 40 in southwest and west-central Ohio.

The restaurant chain has invested millions of dollars into its Dayton-area locations in the last seven years, including a 2008 raze-rebuild of the restaurant on Woodman Drive just south of U.S. 35, and an extensive remodeling and renovation initiative launched in 2010 that the company called a “Farm-Fresh Refresh” revitalization.

The renovations were designed to update facilities, modernize the Bob Evans brand, and appeal to a changing demographic, company officials said at the time. The revitalization project led to a 5 percent increase in sales at the renovated restaurants.

Last month, the company reported in its fiscal third-quarter 2015 results a 3.8 percent increase in same-store sales for the quarter, but even that encouraging performance came with a caveat: because of discounting, along with higher food and labor costs, the sales translated into a 2 percent decline in operating income, “demonstrating the challenges we face in turning around performance,” Hood said.

Bob Evans announced in December that the company and its CEO, Steve Davis, would part ways by the end of 2014 “by mutual agreement.” The company’s board of directors has yet to hire a permanent replacement.

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