The owner of casual-dining Black-eyed Pea restaurants in Texas filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization Wednesday, citing revenue shortfalls and an inability to attract new capital.
Arlington, Texas-based Restaurants Acquisition I LLC, which has 13 Black-eyed Pea units in Texas and one Dixie House restaurant in Dallas, in its bankruptcy petition listed assets in the range of $1 million and $10 million and debt between $10 million and $50 million.
The bankruptcy filing involves neither the five Black-eyed Pea restaurants in Colorado nor the one store in Tennessee, which are owned by separate companies.
The largest cited creditor was US Foodservice, with more than $881,000 owed, as well as taxes owed the Internal Revenue Service.
Restaurants Acquisitions said in its bankruptcy petition, filed in Delaware, that it had “a decline in its cash flow performance” since 2013 and that its occupancy costs had “outpaced its revenues over the same period.”
Black-eyed Pea was founded in 1975 in Dallas. By the early 2000s, the chain had more than 100 restaurants, but 66 were closed in a 2001 creditor-forced bankruptcy organization by then-owner Phoenix Restaurant Group Inc. of Madison, Tenn., once known as DenAmerica Corp.
Correction: Dec. 4, 2015 This story has been updated to correct that the one Tennessee restaurant was not part of the bankruptcy petition.
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