Report: Lone Star, Texas Land & Cattle close unitsReport: Lone Star, Texas Land & Cattle close units

Day Star Restaurant Group shuttered a number of Lone Star Steakhouse & Saloon and Texas Land & Cattle restaurants this month, continuing a string of closures from the fall, according to local media reports.

The closings reduced the Plano, Texas-based company’s holdings to about 30 casual-dining restaurants, down from the 105 when the brands were acquired in late 2013.

Representatives of Day Star Restaurant Group did not return phone messages Tuesday or Wednesday. A search Tuesday of bankruptcy filings via the Pacer court records database did not produce any results for Day Star, Lone Star or Texas Land & Cattle.

Day Star co-founder Scott Smith was named Tuesday as a brand president for Southlake, Texas-based Del Frisco Restaurant Group’s Sullivan’s division. A spokesperson for Smith on Thursday said, Smith “is no longer involved with Day Star Restaurant Group and has not been since March 2016 when he stepped down due to disagreements with his partners on the direction of the company.”

Local media over the past week reported Lone Star closures from California and Colorado to Michigan and South Dakota. The recent closings followed a number last year, including restaurants in Iowa and Pennsylvania.

Several Texas Land & Cattle Steak House locations closed on Jan. 20, including one in Killeen, Texas, and another restaurant in Dallas’ Uptown neighborhood. Employees at the Dallas location on that Friday afternoon told potential customers they had just been notified of the unit’s closing.

Lone Star Steakhouse’s website now lists 16 locations in nine states. The greatest concentration is four units, in both Illinois and North Carolina.

The Texas Land & Cattle website now lists 15 units in four states, with most of them in Texas.

Unit counts are down considerably from when Smith, who served as chairman and CEO of Day Star, and Tim Dungan, president and chief financial officer, formed Day Star and bought the two brands in December 2013 from private-equity firm Lone Star Funds.

At the time of that acquisition, Texas Land & Cattle had 27 restaurants in five states, and Lone Star Steakhouse operated 78 restaurants in 29 states.

For Nation’s Restaurant News’ Top 200 last year, Lone Star, with 64 units at the end of December 2015, had $131.2 million in estimated fiscal-year sales and Texas Land & Cattle, with 25 units at the end of December 2015, had an estimated $65.6 million in fiscal-year sales.

Day Star’s fiscal 2015 revenues were estimated at $196.7 million, down from an estimated $209.9 million in fiscal 2014.

Alan Liddle, NRN’s data and event content director, contributed to this report.

Contact Ron Ruggless at [email protected]

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