Struggling Boston Market cooked by Long Island evictions

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Behind on its rent and other bills, Boston Market was evicted from another of its Long Island restaurants Wednesday. 

The Suffolk County Sheriff evicted the company from the building at 2170 Jericho Turnpike in Commack after the property’s landlord was fed up with the tenant’s failure to meet its obligations. 

The Boston Market in Commack is the latest of its Long Island restaurants to be evicted, following several others in Nassau and Suffolk counties over the past year, and there are likely more to come. 

Landlords of the retail properties that Boston Market was leasing here on Long Island have been forced to kick them out for nonpayment of rent. The restaurant was evicted from its New Hyde Park location a few months ago. 

“They owed us over a year’s worth of rent,” said Jordan Sanders, a principal of Sanders Equities, which owns the property. “They didn’t even tell their employees about what was going on, so when the sheriff showed up it was pretty sad for the workers.” 

Garden City-based Breslin Organization had a similar experience at its West Hempstead property, as Boston Market’s rent payments first became erratic, and the tenant eventually became noncompliant, according to a Breslin spokesman. The landlord was forced to evict them from the restaurant property on Hempstead Turnpike this summer and is seeking to collect the back rent. 

Boston Market was also evicted from the property at 23 West Main St. in East Islip this summer, after it had occupied the restaurant since 1995. 

“We had been chasing them for rent for the last two years and they would pay right before we would have terminated their lease,” said Walter Morris, principal of the property’s Huntington-based owner WDP Enterprises. “It was always going through the courts. They stopped paying rent around January and we evicted them for nonpayment.” 

WDP has since leased the 3,000-square-foot East Islip restaurant to Tex’s Chicken and Burgers, which is expected to open by the end of the year. 

The Boston Market has been having issues in other regions as well. The chain ran afoul of the law in August after the New Jersey Department of Labor and Workforce Development issued stop-work orders at 27 Boston Market locations in New Jersey after finding multiple violations of workers’ rights, including more than $600,000 in back wages owed to 314 workers, according to a NJDOL statement. The company eventually paid the back wages to its employees and the stores were allowed to reopen. 

Boston Market’s headquarters in Golden, Colo. was seized in May by local authorities for owing more than $300,000 in sales and payroll taxes, which the company has since paid and regained control of the offices. But there have been more signs of trouble as many of the chain’s locations are closing, have been abandoned, or have been forced to stock their stores with supermarket food as vendor contracts run out, according to Nation’s Restaurant News. 

The company has been slapped with several lawsuits from former employees and unpaid vendors throughout the country, with claims that Boston Market collectively owes them more than $12 million, according to published reports. 

First known as Boston Chicken, the chain was launched in Newton, Mass. in 1985 and was renamed Boston Market in 1995. After rapid expansion, the company filed for bankruptcy in 1998 and was purchased by fast-food giant McDonald’s Corporation two years later. McDonald’s sold Boston Market to Sun Capital Partners in 2007 and Sun sold it to its present owner Engage Brands, a subsidiary of Rohan Group in 2020. 

Once boasting more than 1,200 locations nationwide, Boston Market is down to around 300 and restaurant industry observers say it’s just a matter of time before the chain disappears completely. 

Company executives were unable to be reached for comment.