More Decline: Popeyes quietly shuts down four Idaho restaurants!

25 April 2019 (02:26 UTC-07 Tango 06) 05 Ordibehesht 1398/19 Sha’ban 1440/21 Wu-Chen 4717

On 24 April the Idaho State Journal discovered the three years old Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen, in Chubbuck, had quietly shutdown. So hush-hush was the shutdown that the exalted city leaders didn’t even know about it! That’s a far cry from the 2016 grand opening in which city leaders made a big deal about it:

In the above KIFI TV report you hear the Popeyes manager state that the location was chosen because they were expecting hundreds of customers from the new Pocatello FBI data center “in the next two months”. That never happened. Just like all the other big job promises by Pocatello and Chubbuck political and business leaders, it hasn’t happened.

Where’s the prosperity?

The Federal Bureau of Investigation digital data center is still under construction, and the promised 6-hundred (reports vary between 500 and 700, depending on which news source reported it, and when) permanent high paying jobs (the majority of which will be transfers from other parts of the U.S.) are still in limbo as the construction is taking much longer than the originally promised one year.

But it wasn’t the only Popeyes in Idaho to recently shutdown; the Ammon (the sudden shutdown was reported by East Idaho News on 19 April) and Twin Falls (KEZJ reports this is not the first or second Popeyes to fail in Twin Falls, it’s the third) locations also shutdown. In January, Boise news media reported the Popeyes there was shutting down by early Spring, as with the other shutdowns no reason was given.

Some people speculate that Idahoans just don’t like fast-food chicken. Maybe it’s the economy.

Not a good pic, but this was taken before the Chipotle shutdown, it’s just to the left of the now shuttered Popeyes. This property was once the iconic Green T, which was gentrified in 2015 to make room specifically for Chipotle and Popeyes!

Oh, the Chubbuck Popeyes isn’t the first restaurant which came to town because of the promise of hundreds of FBI data center customers, to shutdown, in July 2018 the Chipotle (right next door to the Popeyes) suddenly shutdown.

Historic and iconic, after 89 years no more Green T in Idaho!

Does anybody in Chubbuck or Pocatello remember the popular and profitable Green T Bar & Grill, which was shutdown in order to make room for the strip-plaza which became home for the now failed Chipotle and Popeyes? The 89 years old Green T was so popular that even President Truman and Willie Nelson ate there, yet greedy local leaders tried to make more money by gentrifying the historic property! The current mayor of Chubbuck even uttered some famous last words about the tear-down of the Green T, saying it was “…the beginning of some real good things coming in.”