Guzman y Gomez sued after sudden Chicago restaurant closures

Restaurant workers at Guzman y Gomez’s Chicago-area stores say the chain left them with no warning, then shut six locations and pushed an estimated 500 employees into a lawsuit over pay and notice. Former U.S. employees filed suit in Illinois court after the Australian fast-food chain abruptly closed all of its Chicagoland restaurants, saying workers were told only through an internal messaging platform late that evening. The complaint seeks 60 days of unpaid wages and benefits under federal and Illinois WARN laws.

For hourly restaurant staff, that kind of shutdown is not just a corporate exit. It can mean a schedule that disappears overnight, a final paycheck that lands late or smaller than expected, and health coverage that ends before people have lined up another job. Federal WARN generally requires 60 calendar days’ notice before qualifying plant closings and mass layoffs, and Illinois requires 60 days’ advance notice for covered closures or mass layoffs at employers with 75 or more full-time workers. Illinois Legal Aid says the state law can also apply when at least 25 full-time employees are laid off and that equals at least one-third of a site’s full-time staff.

The Chicago footprint made the retreat even sharper. NBC Chicago reported that Guzman y Gomez’s U.S. operations were exclusively in the Chicago area and included eight restaurants, with locations in Bucktown, Naperville, Schaumburg, Evanston and Crystal Lake among them. Reuters reported that the company said it was quitting the United States because sales and financial performance were poor, a turnabout from assurances as recently as February that it would stay in the market. Founder and co-CEO Steven Marks said the business was unlikely to deliver the performance needed to justify continued shareholder investment.

That sequence is the warning sign restaurant workers should watch: a brand talking up growth one month and, a few months later, admitting the market no longer works. Guzman y Gomez, founded in 2005, had used global growth ambitions to help power its 2024 sharemarket listing. Its U.S. exit, by contrast, sent the stock up as much as 20.58%, a reminder that what looks like a strategic reset for investors can land on the floor as missed shifts and lost income for cooks, cashiers, servers and managers.

The company said it was aware of the legal action and confident it had met its obligations to U.S. employees. For the workers now tied to the lawsuit, the immediate issue is whether the law will force the chain to pay for the notice it did not give and the benefits that vanished with the doors.