Sizzler will close the remaining 9 restaurants by November 15

An Aussie icon is shutting its last restaurants after a long 30-year legacy serving up cheese toasts, grilled steaks and salad bars.

Sizzler is closing all of its nine remaining Australian restaurants by mid-November.

Its parent company Collins Foods made the “difficult decision” after sales were slow to recover from the peak of COVID-19 impacts.

About 600 employees have been offered redundancy packages and some staff will be deployed to its KFC or Taco Bell operations.

The Sizzler restaurants closing are located in Queensland at Mermaid Beach, Loganholme, Toowoomba, Maroochydore and Caboolture; in Western Australia in Innaloo, Kelmscott and Morley; and in New South Wales in Campbelltown.

This comes after the Rockhampton branch, located within the Stockland Shopping Centre, closed in March.

Mermaid Beach Sizzler is one of the nine stores that will close permanently, marking the end of an era.

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Collins Foods also operates KFC and Taco Bell but said Sizzler has been the “hardest hit during the COVID-19 pandemic”.

“Sizzler revenues and earnings have been slow to recover from peak COVID-19 impacts,” the company said in a statement this morning.

“This has been a difficult decision for Collins Foods, especially given the impact it will have on our dedicated Sizzler employees and customers in Australia,” Collins Foods’ CEO Drew O’Malley commented.

Sizzler’s favourite salad bars will be no more when the last remaining stores shut down next month.

“The ongoing impact of COVID-19 on revenues has meant that unfortunately these restaurants have not established a clear path to profitability in the foreseeable future,” he added.

The network of Sizzler restaurants have been under review since 2015.

This financial year, revenue from Sizzler’s restaurants in Australia accounted for only three per cent of Collins Food’ total revenue.

Sizzler restaurants have been closing down across the country for the past five years.

SIZZLER’S STORY

The first ever Sizzler restaurant was opened in California in 1958 by restaurateurs Del and Helen Johnson, who had read an article about a radical new “self service budget steakhouse” restaurant model.

At the time the menu contained just steak, salad and dinner rolls but later expanded into hamburgers by the early 1960s, when the restaurant grew into a Los Angeles chain.

In the 1970s the concept evolved and the company continued to expand, and it launched in Australia in 1984, with Sizzler owner and Australian listed company Collins Foods International converting Bonanza and Taco Den restaurants into Sizzlers.

It soon became an Aussie family favourite, and went on to expand into the Asian market with branches now found in the US, Australia, Thailand, Japan and China.