News

Taylor Gourmet investor pulls funds, chain closes

September 24, 2018

Taylor Gourmet, a 10-year-old Washington D.C.-based hoagie chain closed all 17 of its locations this weekend, after KarpReilly, the private equity firm that owned 75 percent of the chain, pulled its funding, according to the Washingtonian. A Taylor spokesman, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to speak publicly, told the paper that the company would soon file for Chapter 7
bankruptcy protection.

KarpReilly had invested $5.6 million into the chain in 2015.

Although neither representatives from KarpReilly nor Taylor Gourmet co-founder Casey Patten responded to FastCasual's requests for comment, The Washingtonian reported that Taylor Gourmet received a lot of negative social media buzz last year when Patten met with President Trump in January 2017, as part of a small-business roundtable at the White House. Sales also dropped.

Patten, however, defended the meeting, saying that he used it to ask the president to cut the red tape at the Small Business Administration and to talk about Taylor Gourmet's immigrant workforce, which was "nervous about the potential regulations coming down the road.” Patten, who is from Philadelphia, said more than half of the company's 300-plus employees were immigrants or the American-born children of immigrants.

Patten had previously told The Washington Post that he's apolitical, and the chain had posted a billboard in Chinatown that stated: "Less Politics, More Hoagies." He also claimed that he didn't vote in the last presidential election and didn't know if he was registered to vote. 

The sandwich chain, according to The Washingtonian, had turned into a local favorite among Washington insiders. President Barack Obama, for example, was a regular at Taylor Gourmet and hosted a roundtable discussion with small-business owners there to discuss his administration's policies.