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Disappearing Sizzlers in your area

Posted: 17 Oct 2008 13:02
by luckysaver
In the Walnut/Diamond Area, there used to be two Sizzler restaurants. Now there are none.

- Nogales/La Puente, West Covina - demolished, the site is currently CVS Pharmacy (was an Albertsons-built Savon Drugs). I visited this location once when it was thriving, back in the early 1990's. This site had the old typeface logo and never became one of those newer locations currently advertised.

- Diamond Bar Blvd at the 60 Freeway, Diamond Bar - closed sometime last year, now open as an upscale chinese fusion restaurant, East180:Cuisine of China. Was built using the old typeface logo and closed with the newer logo.

luckysaver

Re: Disappearing Sizzlers in your area

Posted: 17 Oct 2008 14:32
by Jeff
The Montebello Sizzler burnt down over a year ago, and recently, they removed the signs on the building. The Sizzler sign on Beverly Blvd though is still there, and they have PODS located still in the parking lot. I don't know if they are planning to reopen eventually or if this is permanently closed. What is weird, at the time it burned down, it was still a very busy Sizzler considering its small size.

It hasnt been on their store locator since it burnt down.

Re: Disappearing Sizzlers in your area

Posted: 18 Oct 2008 23:34
by javelin
Jeff wrote:The Montebello Sizzler burnt down over a year ago
I hope the irony wasn't lost on that. The Sizzler in Victorville, CA closed years ago and has been hanging on as a Korean BBQ. In fact, every restaurant on that block has changed ownership at least once. The neighboring Mexican restaurant is on it's second incarnation and started life as an Arby's. The building across the street was a Chuck E Cheese, then became a ripoff called Buzz-E's Pizza Time Circus, then a church, a furniture store, a trade school and now vacant. The Coco's next to that was a ranch-style Big Boy, and a few hundred yards away is a former Fuddrucker's, turned nightclub.

And across the street is a Del Taco that hasn't changed hands since it was built in 1967.

Re: Disappearing Sizzlers in your area

Posted: 24 Oct 2008 00:48
by Super S
Sizzler hasn't really scaled back recently, but they closed a lot of locations in Portland, OR and Vancouver, WA about 10 years ago. Vancouver has no Sizzlers left. One by Vancouver mall is now Round Table Pizza, and the other on East Mill Plain was briefly a Denny's (which also has entirely left Vancouver) and is now a Chinese buffet restaurant.

Re: Disappearing Sizzlers in your area

Posted: 24 Oct 2008 15:53
by Brian Lutz
I only know of one Sizzler around here, which is in Tukwila near Southcenter Mall. I haven't ever been to that one (the only Sizzler I've been to in the past couple of years was down in Utah where they seem to be all over the place,) but apparently there are others in the Southern Puget Sound region (Tacoma, Olympia, etc.) and one in Bremerton on the other side of the Sound. I'm not in any of those areas often enough to have actually seen one though.

It would seem odd that there would be no Denny's left down in Vancouver though, since there's still plenty of them up here.

Re: Disappearing Sizzlers in your area

Posted: 26 Oct 2008 23:00
by TenPoundHammer
Sizzler pulled out of Michigan I don't know how long ago. Mid 1990s perhaps? I'm finding no ghost listings for them on the Web.

One in Battle Creek opened in the 1970s as a HoJo restaurant, and was most recently a comedy club. It was supposed to have been torn down in 2006 for a Culver's, but that somehow never came to fruition, and I think it's still vacant. There were two in Grand Rapids as well, both on 28th St. One is now a Lone Star, and the other is now Mountain Jack's. Finally, one in Westland went through a rotation of other restaurants before taking its current identity as Buffalo Wild Wings.

Re: Disappearing Sizzlers in your area

Posted: 27 Oct 2008 21:58
by Groceteria
TenPoundHammer wrote:Sizzler pulled out of Michigan I don't know how long ago.
Sizzler had a major meltdown in the mid 1990s and closed, as I recall, about half its locations nationwide.

Re: Disappearing Sizzlers in your area

Posted: 27 Oct 2008 22:49
by storewanderer
I think after that meltdown of the mid 90's where they basically lost their status as a sort of national chain, they were in bankruptcy in the late 90's. Sizzler is run by an investment firm now. They have opened some new locations, but it seems like location closures continue...

Re: Disappearing Sizzlers in your area

Posted: 02 Jan 2009 07:56
by TheQuestioner
I was not aware of that, though it makes sense. Sizzler seemed to be everywhere in the late 80's and early 90's. I remember them entering the DC area in the mid-80's with much fanfare. That was the first time I had ever heard of them. This was the "pastel-colored-box-with-Arial-font-signage" era, and they seemed to all close overnight some time in the early to mid 90s. I figured it was a "Jack In The Box" situation, because the few times i went there I found the food bland and undercooked. I thought the whole chain died until I can to CA and saw them, complete with new signage. They seem to be doing OK here, haven't seen any close in NorCal in the past few years. I tried them again recently and enjoyed my burger but the fries were as cold and limp as ever. I guess they have their customer base out there somewhere...
Groceteria wrote:
TenPoundHammer wrote:Sizzler pulled out of Michigan I don't know how long ago.
Sizzler had a major meltdown in the mid 1990s and closed, as I recall, about half its locations nationwide.

Re: Disappearing Sizzlers in your area

Posted: 02 Jan 2009 12:26
by runchadrun
At their peak in 1978 there were over 600 Sizzlers. They closed 130 stores in their 1997 bankruptcy, including most of their midwest and northeast stores. As of 2005 there were 226 US stores, 145 of which were in California.

Their first store was in Culver City in 1958, I'm guessing it was the one at Culver Center which was torn down and is now a Best Buy. (There is/was another one over by Fox Hills Mall but it was probably built later than 1958.)

In addition to expansion via franchises, this is the current strategy from a 2005 Times article:
Cole aims to rebuild Sizzler's appeal to what he calls the "skip generation," a term that almost evokes the "lost generation" of American expatriates who sat out the Twenties in Paris. In this context it means people aged 25 to 40 who fondly remember eating at Sizzlers with their parents in the '70s, but who abandoned the chain during the dark buffet years. Cole figures that as they raise families of their own, they're primed to return to a sit-down restaurant where they can order a steak dinner for $9 to $12.

Re: Disappearing Sizzlers in your area

Posted: 02 Jan 2009 16:55
by rich
They built up their overseas presence in the 90s. They are omnipresent in Bangkok.

Re: Disappearing Sizzlers in your area

Posted: 03 Jan 2009 01:00
by Daniel
Their meltdown in the 90's reduced their Fresno presence to 1 restaurant. The Clovis location became Play It Again Sports, and the Blackstone and Dakota location became a Country Waffles restaurant. I do miss the TV ads with the whispered "Sizzler!" at the end.

Re: Disappearing Sizzlers in your area

Posted: 03 Jan 2009 04:00
by lvkewlkid
i recently found that Las Vegas has lost its Sizzlers, not sure why...

Re: Disappearing Sizzlers in your area

Posted: 03 Jan 2009 06:29
by storewanderer
It looks like the Las Vegas Sizzlers closed sometime between October and late December, perhaps not all at once. I understand they had a new franchisee in that market who took some corporate units a few years ago and signed a development agreement to build a number of new locations. As I understand it, they did at least get a couple new locations up.

I wouldn't be surprised to see at least some of them re-open in Las Vegas, but who knows. Just two Sizzlers left in NV now, a corporate unit in Carson City and one in Sparks (fully renovated recently) run by Sizzling Platter, the Utah-based franchisee.

I always liked this chain, but they seem to have been crippled with execution problems. They have a corporate unit in Auburn, CA that is spot-on every time I visit. Other units haven't been so consistent. Their prices, for what you get, are also on the high side now generally.

Re: Disappearing Sizzlers in your area

Posted: 03 Jan 2009 08:55
by lvkewlkid
the one at Eastern/Tropicana has already been converted to some kind of burger place...