Burger chain Fuddruckers suddenly closed its four Columbus-area restaurants this week, leaving the central Ohio market for the second time in nearly two decades.
The company also closed the two other Ohio restaurants it owns. The only Fuddruckers remaining in the state are franchise stores in Beavercreek and Miamisburg.
A spokeswoman at the Austin, Texas, headquarters for the restaurant chain confirmed the closings yesterday but declined to comment further.
Fuddruckers had restaurants at Crosswoods, Mill Run, 5271 E. Main St. and 3586 W. Dublin-Granville Rd. A franchised location on Cleveland Avenue near I-270 closed in 2001.
Central Ohio has no shortage of gourmet burger places, whether they?re chains such as Max & Erma?s and Red Robin, or individual restaurants such as the Thurman Cafe.
In fact, just about every chain in the casual-dining sector has upscale hamburger offerings.
“It?s almost to the point that saturation gets talked about,” said Conrad Lyon, a restaurant analyst for Cleveland-based investment firm FTN Midwest Securities Corp.
“If you go to these stores, many of them have the same feel to the outside and inside, they tend to rotate the same menu items in and out, and the price points are about the same,” he said.
Fuddruckers, which says it offers the “world?s greatest hamburger,” was established in 1980 in San Antonio by restaurant impresario Phil Romano.
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