X

About 60 lose jobs as Massena, O'burg, Potsdam restaurants suddenly close

Posted 12/27/18

By ANDY GARDNER North Country Now About 60 people found themselves suddenly out of work just before Christmas as a local businessman closed three of his restaurants. Marc Morley owns half a dozen …

This item is available in full to subscribers.

Please log in to continue

Log in

About 60 lose jobs as Massena, O'burg, Potsdam restaurants suddenly close

Posted

By ANDY GARDNER
North Country Now

About 60 people found themselves suddenly out of work just before Christmas as a local businessman closed three of his restaurants.

Marc Morley owns half a dozen North Country eateries and has closed Hot Tamale/Chix n Pies in Massena and Ogdensburg and Between the Buns/Club 21 in Potsdam.

“The timing wasn’t perfect for some people as far as calendar year where Christmas falls and stuff like that,” Morley said in a Thursday afternoon phone interview. “We ran out of money. We weren’t able to keep the business operating.

“We had no choice. The businesses had no money to operate. We're unable to purchase food.”

Morley said although the Potsdam and Canton Hot Tamale restaurants remain open, he is trying to sell them.

Morley’s American Grill in Massena, which is owned and operated by his brother, Matt Morley, will remain open.

“Morley’s is totally separate from everything, and as I understand is doing well in that community. No worries about that place,” Marc Morley said.

Some of Morley’s employees at the shuttered restaurants have complained in public social media posts that their paychecks are bouncing.

“We’re communicating with employees to make sure they’re all getting paid. Some have been paid. Some are waiting on money still,” Morley said.

Some angry employees are also saying there was no notice given of the closures. Some said they learned from Facebook, and others say they showed up to work to find the establishment closed.

Morley says he made it the managers’ responsibility to make the notifications.

“We called our managers and said ‘this is what’s going on. We’ll have to close. Let everybody know they’re getting paid. The checks will be cleared,’” Morley said. “With that many employees, we don’t even have contact information for all of them.

“I reached out to the two managers and they let their people know. I’m not sure if they didn’t call every one of their employees and let them know. That was on the management side to fill everybody in.”

Morley said the restaurants’ failure has been hard on him.

“We’ve employed thousands of people over the last 10 years. That gets missed. We took care of a lot of families over the last 10 years. It’s not like we’re holding out,” he said. “We’re in a financial hardship ourselves. It’s not something we’re proud of.

“Anybody that’s signed the front of a check will tell you, you take a lot of risk to make it happen.”

This is not the first time Morley restaurants have encountered financial troubles. In 2015, Between the Buns briefly closed after being seized by the state for sales tax debt.