A BURGER restaurant in Warwick has shut suddenly – to the distress of staff who have not been paid, and suppliers who claim they are owed thousands of pounds.
The London Burger Kitchen (LBK) branch, which opened in the former Ask Italian site earlier this year, has closed its doors without warning.
It follows the sudden closure of its branch in Broadstreet Rugby Club in Binley Woods last month. A brief announcement was made on the Binley site’s Facebook page, though circumstances around the closure remained a mystery.
It is believed a lease was secured for a branch in Coventry’s West Orchard shopping centre, but the restaurant never came to fruition.
Before the Warwick branch shut last week, its Facebook page read the branch was ‘closed for maintenance’ before the page was completely removed along with the website.
However, the status of the London-themed restaurant on Companies House is listed as ‘active’.
Staff at the Warwick branch have been left distressed, with some claiming they are owed a month’s worth of wages.
Tasha Adams, who runs cleaning business Trusty Dusty, says the invoices for her cleaning service remain unpaid for the last week.
She said: “I could see the place was going downhill – my weekly invoices were constantly delayed so I had to hand my notice in as I was working for nothing.
“I was doing seven days a week there, three hours each morning, scrubbing away for free.
“I have three children and one on the way, I can’t work for nothing. And at 20 weeks pregnant, trying to run a small cleaning business has left me in a stressful position of me trying to fight for my well-earned money.
“I wasn’t notified the place wasn’t open. I’d seen on Facebook it was closed for maintenance but I can see suppliers have been and removed some goods and there is a smashed window.”
A spokesman for supplier Rowley’s Butchers said the company owed them £24,000.
He told the Observer: “We had to invest in new equipment to achieve the kind of product they wanted and we’ve just been left high and dry. We stopped supplying them about two months ago – it got too much to carry on supplying them with no payments.
“It’s just a debt we’ll have to pay off. We don’t have creditors insurance, we were just helping them out at the time. We thought they’re opening a branch in Warwick and we’ve got a shop in Warwick so it could have been a good team but we were obviously wrong.”
The Observer has been unable to contact LBK for comment.
