It’s not clear if the Boston Market in Elgin is temporarily closed, permanently closed or operating under sporadic hours.
No one at the Randall Road business answers the phone and calls to the company’s corporate headquarters in Colorado get a response that the number’s not set up to receive calls.
Online sites list the business as being open and delivery services like Grubhub and DoorDash indicate you can place orders there. One social media poster said they saw a U-Haul parked at the back door last weekend and people moving things out of the building.
An in-person visit to the store from 11 a.m. to noon Thursday proved unenlightening. The drive-thru menu was illuminated as if the business were open, some lights inside the building were on and the outdoor PA system was playing music. The parking lot, however, was empty and the doors locked.
A sign on the front door said, “Sorry we are only taking cash. Sorry for the inconvenience.” Through the glass doors, a sign taped to the cash register at the counter noted the drink station was temporarily unavailable while another posted to an interior door said the business was hiring.
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The city of Elgin had no information on the restaurant’s status. Communications Director Edell Friedman said businesses typically don’t notify the city if they close or go out of business.
The Colorado-based Boston Market Realty Co. is up to date on its tax payments, having paid $16,615 on July 27 and $16,373 on Sept. 25.
It’s possible the store’s problems are linked to the company’s ongoing financial woes.
Restaurant News reported in July that Rosemont-based US Foods sued the company, claiming Boston Market owes them more than $11 million. In late September, SFGate reported that the only Boston Market left in San Francisco had been served an eviction notice earlier that month, the same fate the Boston Market in Rochester, New York, met in late July, according to the Democrat & Chronicle.
And in New Jersey, officials in mid-September lifted a stop-work order for more than two dozen Boston Markets in the state that had been told to shut down in August over unpaid wages, according to northjersey.com. The restaurants reopened after the state received more than $630,000 in back pay for 314 workers, the report said.
The Denver Post reported in May that the company’s headquarters in Golden, Colorado, and its three restaurants in the state had been seized by the Colorado Department of Revenue for failure to pay to more than $328,000 in sales and payroll taxes. A few days later, the company settled the matter with the state.
Boston Market has been owned by Engaged Brands, a division of the Rohan Group, since 2020. It was founded in the Boston area in the mid-1980s as Boston Chicken.
A plaque on the wall of the Elgin location notes it opened for business on May 12, 1996.
Mike Danahey is a freelance reporter for The Courier-News.