New Jersey’s last remaining Bertucci’s Restaurant (Mount Laurel) has closed. Workers were apparently told about the closing, and as of this morning the restaurant is closed.
The information was first shared on town groups, and was then picked up by “A View From Evesham”
The location has been removed from the Bertucci’s website, and Google’s extended business features such as search preview pages and maps, shows them as permanenty closed,
The restaurant building is located in the East Gate Shopping Center, in a free-standing building along Nixon drive, positioned somewhat in front of Home Depot.
The Mount Laurel location was the last remaining New Jersey located restaurant for the Italian food and pizza eatery.
Things have been on a steady decline for the chain.
Last December the Marlton location was closed, with signage indicating customers to visit the Mount Laurel location (Facebook: A View from Evesham)
A few months before that in October, the Gloucester Township (Sicklerville) location also closed abruptly, with no warning to workers. (42Freeway)
I’ll likely stop in at Mount Laurel on Tuesday… fully expecting crews to be on site already removing contents and taking down signs. When they closed in Sicklerville restaurant location, within one day the signage was off the building and it’s contents were mostly gone.
It’s a rough time for iconic national casual eatery chains, as earlier in the year the Cherry Hill Houlihan’s also closed without notice. The building is set to become a Tommy’s Tavern.
And while this has been a few years, just today I wrote about the closed Don Pablos building in Deptford will be demolished soon, ahead of the development of a Raising Cane’s Chicken Finger restaurant.
Bertucci’s Brand – On the Downturn
If you weren’t familiar, Bertucci’s is a chain of pizza and Italian food restaurants, with full bar.
Today their website only shows 26 USA locations, which is a downward trend as reports say at one time they had over 100 locations. For New Jersey there are no locations remaining.
Things stared slipping even before the Covid pandemic, when in 2018 the brand filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. (USA Today). At that time the had 59 locations.
After some financial moves, the brand ended up in the hands of Earl Enterprises who acquired the Bertucci’s brand for $20 million that same year.
Earl Enterprises owns over a dozen restaurant brands, many of them iconic such as Planet Hollywood, Brio, and Buca di Beppo.
I am not 100% clear on the plans for the Mount Laurel building and I’d imagine it will be put up for sale/rent as is the case with other locations that closed.