Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Alaska 3 Chili's restaurants in Alaska close

ANCHORAGE, Alaska - Three Chili's Grill & Bar locations in Alaska closed over the weekend.

The restaurants closed in Anchorage, Fairbanks and Wasilla. Maureen Locus, a spokeswoman for Chili's parent company, Brinker International, says in an email that they recently "made the difficult decision" to terminate the franchise rights.

The franchisee was Duke Investments of Anchorage. Calls there Monday morning weren't answered.

Locus says Alaska remains a valuable market for Chili's, and the company will evaluate options. She also says it's not an indication Chili's is leaving the Alaska market, and a Chili's Too remains open at the Anchorage airport.

She says they will also help Chili's employees find employment...............rite, to 99 weeks of unemploment checks...... besides the food is micowave queenie fare anyway (imo....worth about 5 bucks btw)



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Everyone at the Olive Garden?

Chili's may be edible but it sure isn't habit-forming!

Don't worry, they'll find another location and let those buildings sit there empty for years to come.

I live down the street from Chili's here in Anch. Seemed like they were always busy whenever we drove by. The fam and I ate there once (had a gift card). The wait staff was all 20 something gals that weren't very interested in serving us~ but they sure were interested in the young guys in there! Food pretty much sucked. Tasted artificial. Never went back....

Before my son deployed to Afgan he was at Ft Rich and told me several times that its hard to find a good place to eat, its either good food and bad service or bad food and hot girls .

They made lots of money but just didnt like to pay their vendors or employees on time. That only works for so long.

I ate there once and it was both trips, first and last. The food was terrible.

Very over priced and very poor food. A beer will set you back a bunch as well.

Good night Chill's!

Now that pisses me off! Employees are the lifeblood of any business, IMHO.

Chili's near were I live seem to be doing ok, I go for the Big Bacon Cheese Burgers while my usual place is closed for the winter. Now you want to talk about poor food and service, try Dennys in Fairbanks. I always thought that a Waffle House would do well in Fairbanks and in the Anchorage Area. But I am not a restaurant guy. Seems like the people who are the franchisee don't know anything about the restaurant business or never gotten any kind of training from Chili's in how to run one. My guess you spend a year working in an established restaurant before they would turn you loose on your own. They serve a good bar type meal here and its reasonable.

I once heard Chili's described as "Applebees with salsa".

Wife was telling me last night that she knew a group of about a dozen or so people that went there for a small party. They all ordered something different and were told that out of all the meals they ordered, 10 were not available.

For those that don't know, they don't prepare their meals fresh, they are shipped prepared, frozen, then are heated per order.

yup they seem to have folks in there eating/drinking....it looks like the same crowd thats in wallmart...after 30 years of shopping in town and seeing the same faces..i walk (forced) into wallmart and....... ...WHO???? are these "people"????.

We have some decent restaraunts, but in general service is either slow, or really, really slow. Unfortunately good timely service is the exception to rule in AK restaraunts.

As to Chili's, as the others have said, overpriced and not very good. Same holds for most chain restaraunts.

I work with a lot of folks in the hosptiality industry with fanchises being one of them. I have eaten at good franchises and some that were horrible, depending how the franchises are run and also the requirements of the franchisor. There are franchisors who are very strict and others that are just out for the money which is usually 6% of the gross, but can go as high as 16% in some cases. Franchisees pay money for a geographic territory and open the franchise. It is like any business and if run correctly you can make a lot of money. If I had to guess and knowing Brinker International who is the franchiseor for Chili's I would probably say the franchisee was not living up to the conditions of the franchise agreement or got behind on their payment to Brinker International. But that is a guess and I'd bet I am pretty close to right. Sorry to hear you lost Chili's.

That is what I have heard, at least concerning the one in Anchorage.

I only went there once and was not impressed and haven't been back since.

Chili's sure was good after eating hunt camp food for 10 days.

The one in Wasilla was nice when I was stationed up there for training for a few months. Seemed like it was packed full every night. I ate there several times with my fiance and had good food. But then again....the places to eat in Ketch arent very good so a nice pile of sh*t on a shingle would probably taste good.