Two Shorty Small’s restaurants in Arkansas have a new owner and avoided the liquidation that closed permanently the six sister restaurants in Arkansas, Missouri, Kansas and Oklahoma.
Let’s Eat LLC of Oklahoma City paid about $800,000 in assumption of debts and payments for the Jonesboro and Little Rock restaurants, the debtors’ attorney, Robert Haupt, said last week. Two Oklahoma corporations, Shorty Small’s of Jonesboro Inc. and Restaurant Concepts & Designs Inc., were the sellers.
The eight restaurants operated until 2011 as independent entities under the Shorty Small’s brand, although debts and decreased revenue due to recession pushed them all to bankruptcy, with $1.63 million in liabilities, Haupt said. Haupt represented all eight companies in the bankruptcies.
All of the restaurants filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization last May and six of them began Chapter 7 liquidation in January.
The Conway restaurant closed in September. Two Branson, Mo., Shorty Small’s eateries and the Oklahoma City and Wichita, Kan., locations closed by the end of 2011. The North Little Rock joint had closed by mid-January.
The new owner has some of the same investors as the prior companies, but “they have no legal relationship with the previous Shorty Small’s,” Haupt said.
Cindy Harsha, vice president for the new Shorty Small’s, said Let’s Eat worked with the landlord of the Shorty Small’s in Wichita, and was able to reopen there in December. Let’s Eat also opened a new store in Oklahoma City, Harsha said.
Let’s Eat is the first entity to join Shorty Small’s eateries under one owner and is already looking to add locations.
Sign up for Daily E-news
