Comment by jfengel

Making money off restaurants is incredibly hard. It's just a lousy business. Even well-run, well-liked, well-attended restaurants are often running on incredibly thin profit margins.

Which seems crazy, since the costs of inputs are so low at most restaurants. They pay workers embarrassingly little money, and the ingredients have massive externalities. (Those "endless shrimp" are possible because of literal slave labor and environmental destruction in southeast Asia.)

And yet restaurants bleed money. There are so many invisible costs -- replacing bent silverware, repairing the walk-in fridge, shady suppliers whose produce you have to toss, etc etc etc etc. It's just a crappy business.

A private equity firm may not know how to turn a profit. Or they could run it with a tiny profit that just isn't worth their time and effort, and it's easier to just shutter it. It's a much bigger hardship to the employees than it is to them -- even the potential gains are too small.