It's been a rough month for Jamawn Woods of Soul Daddy, the winner of "America's Next Great Restaurant": all three of his locations have been shut down just eight weeks after they opened.
Soul Daddy had three locations as a part of Woods' prize for winning the NBC reality show: Hollywood and Highland in Los Angeles, South Street Seaport in New York City and the Mall of America in Minnesota. All three locations opened on May 2, but the Los Angeles and New York locations shut their doors by mid-June. The Soul Daddy in the Mall of America shut down on Tuesday.
The Soul Daddy shutdown seems to have caught Jamawn Woods and his team by surprise. Woods was originally scheduled to undergo management training for the next year, while manager Josh Furman told the Star Tribune, "We had permission to do more of our own thing on our own level. I didn't see this coming." The Star Tribune also reports that all Soul Daddy employees were referred to a recruiter at Mexican restaurant chain Chipotle.
An official statement from ANGR Holdings, which owned Soul Daddy, reads in part, "This was a difficult decision for us, as we wanted to see Soul Daddy succeed, but the restaurant simply was not performing as we had hoped."