ERIE — BenchWarmers Tavern & Grill shuttered three metro-area locations Thursday after its chief executive was arrested on a parole violation.
Meanwhile, 9News reported that employees of the Erie location were stripping the restaurant of its fixtures Friday afternoon.
The Broomfield-based sports-bar chain — which had “amazing” business during its past few months of existence — also had to nix its plans to open 17 more restaurants, said Mindy Bulmer, BenchWarmers’ regional manager.
“We haven’t been paid since June 30,” she said.
The closures, which also include the Centennial and Aurora sites, have left about 300 people out of work, Bulmer said.
CEO Kevin R. Foote, 47, was booked into Boulder County Jail on Wednesday. A police report was not immediately available Friday.
From 1993 to 2003, Foote was arrested about a dozen times in Colorado on suspicion of such crimes as fraud, larceny, theft and illegal use of credit cards. A judge dismissed one felony larceny theft charge in 2000, but Foote went to prison three years later after pleading guilty on four counts of a habitual-criminal misdemeanor and one count of felony larceny theft between $300 and $10,000.
Frustrated workers at the closed Erie location took matters into their own hands, stripping the restaurant of its fixtures, including TVs, and taking beer and liquor as compensation, according to 9News.
The move was apparently approved by managers who still had not been paid.
“It’s like Robin Hood,” said former BenchWarmers area director Tim Watts. “We are trying to take from the rich and give to the poor.”
