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Tippin's shuts down
Tippin's Restaurants
Inc., an area institution known for its made-from-scratch pies and
cheesecakes, shuttered its four remaining Tippin's restaurants and its lone Gambucci's operation on Thursday. The Overland Park-based restaurant chain sought Chapter 11
protection from creditors last year and had hoped to emerge from bankruptcy
as a profitable if slimmed-down operation. But the last 60 days saw a
dramatic downturn in revenues, and Tippin's officials decided to close the
restaurants' doors. “The decline in revenues created a severe shortage of working
capital,” said Ron Weiss, one of the company's bankruptcy attorneys. “The
result is that they don't have the ability to continue operating.” The restaurant closings will throw about 350 salaried and hourly
employees out of work. Most of the 100 employees at the company's pie manufacturing
plant in Four B is run by the Fred Ball family and operates area Hen
House, Price Chopper and Balls Food Stores. Four B stores have carried
Tippin's pies since 1998, when Tippin's launched a branded pie program. The
stores will continue to carry the pies. Tippin's was founded in 1979 by Pillsbury Co. veterans James Kerwin and Gary Guzzo, and
David Belin, a now-deceased Des Moines, Iowa,
lawyer. Originally called Pippin's, after the popular pie apple and a
contemporaneous Broadway hit, it changed its name after a West Coast
restaurant chain laid claim to the moniker. “We needed to have a few breaks and we just didn't get the
breaks,” Kerwin, president and chief executive of
Tippin's, said Thursday. “In my opinion, there's going to be a lot of this. I
think the big chains are doing the same thing to our industry that the Home
Depots and “I think there are probably very, very few independents —
locally owned, independent operators — who are having any fun these days.” Even in its worst times, Tippin's had legions of devoted
customers, particularly among the elderly — many of whom dined there several
times a week. One regular customer, a distressed Harriett Smith of Smith, who had gone to the Prairie Village location to eat and
was surprised to find a “Closed” sign on the door, said she dined at the
restaurant almost every day since her husband died a year ago. “It was somewhere I could come to and feel like I belonged in
the world,” she said. Local restaurateurs said that business had been slow but picking
up in recent months, especially from business travelers with expense
accounts. Tippin's, though, which mainly drew families and older patrons,
didn't benefit from that business. “They just have a lower-check average,” said Paul Khoury, co-founder of the PB&J Restaurant Group in Khoury, speaking in general, said
restaurants largely fail for two reasons: “They don't consistently execute
the food and they don't have good service. That's almost universal.” Alex Pryor, president of the Independent Restaurant Association
and owner of Zin in downtown “There's no shortage of new competition,” Pryor said. “There's
still this fascination with opening new restaurants, but there aren't enough
people dining out to support them.” Kerwin attributed the losses at Tippin's to
the difficult economic environment, intense competition from large national
chains, an inability to advertise effectively and the low-carb
diet craze. “We've been so strapped for cash and we were walking on thin ice
anyway …,” Kerwin said. “We think we see a glimmer
of hope because this economy is starting to recover some, and then this low-carb craze hits — pastas at Gambucci's
and pies at Tippin's. It couldn't be worse.” Before falling on hard times, Tippin's operated 15 family
restaurants, including six in the After the bankruptcy filing, the company continued to operate
four area Tippin's restaurants, a fifth restaurant in Tulsa, Okla., Gambucci's, the pie plant and a local food plant. The
food plant made pie fillings, soups, dressings and about 40 other products
for the company's restaurants and for supermarkets. The At its peak in the early 1990s, Tippin's racked up sales of
about $40 million and employed about 1,800 people in 18 Tippin's restaurants
in Kerwin expected to do $1 million in
first-year sales after opening the first Tippin's location in 1980 on the
former site of the Fox 50 Drive-In Theater in The first Tippin's, at 8693 Bluejacket, was one of the four
Tippin's locations closed Thursday. The other shuttered restaurants were the
company's 23-year-old second location, at The lone Gambucci's restaurant, a
casual-dining Italian restaurant at While the restaurants saw sales plummet, wholesale sales by the
pie and food plants grew from $570,000 in fiscal 1998 to $8.37 million in
fiscal 2004, according to bankruptcy court documents. The documents projected
manufacturing sales of more than $13 million in fiscal 2005. The pie plant makes more than 125 products, including fruit
pies, cream pies, pie shells, cheesecakes, decorated cakes, quick breads,
bagels, croissants and cookies. The products are frozen and most are shipped
in truckload quantities. The Star's Victoria Sizemore Long contributed to this story. To reach Dan Margolies, call (816) 234-4481 or send e-mail to dmargolies@kcstar.com To reach Joyce Smith, call (816) 234-4692 or send e-mail to jsmith@kcstar.com |
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