Ha ha!

News that’s a couple of days old, but I haven’t seen spread that widely, and worth commenting on anyway:

Noon Mediterranean filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on Friday.

Noon was famously and formerly known as VertsKebap, and started here in Austin. I remember going there once and thinking it was…okay. But as I’ve written before, that’s a style of food that really doesn’t resonate with me. I knew people, including some of my cow orkers, who loved the original Verts and ate there regularly.

Then, sometime last year, they decided to:

• change the company name. (As I recall, they hired expensive restaurant consultants, and then pretty much badgered those people into recommending a name change.)
• Get rid of many of the things customers (including my co-workers) liked, such as the spit-roasted meat.
• Move their corporate headquarters to New York City.

Of course, Chapter 11 is just a reorganization, not a termination. But:

Boyd indicates in court documents that Noon Mediterranean intends to use bankruptcy to “reject” leases for underperforming locations.
“The debtor intends to use the streamlined footprint to pursue a strategic transaction (whether via further investment, financing or other means) which maximizes the value of the debtor’s assets for the benefit of stakeholders,” Boyd says in court documents.
Noon Mediterranean says it intends to work with Griffin Financial Group to help weigh its options going forward.

One hopes that the options they are weighing include selling people good food that they want, and not spending money on expensive restaurant consultants.