Razzoo's Cajun Café Files Chapter 11, Sells Assets for $18.8 Million

Razzoo's Cajun Café, the Dallas-born chain that built its identity around crawfish boils and bayou-style cooking, sold off the bulk of its assets for $18.8 million in December 2025 after filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on October 1 — leaving nine of its 20 locations permanently shuttered and thousands of line cooks, servers, and kitchen staff facing abrupt job losses.

The buyer, ThirtyThree97 LLC, is a subsidiary of Dallas-based M Crowd Restaurant Group Ltd., the same operator behind Mi Cocina, The Mercury, and Vaqueros. Eleven Razzoo's locations transferred to the new owner as going-concern operations: Alliance, Arlington, Cedar Hill, Cityview, Concord, Harker Heights, McKinney, Mesquite, Round Rock, Stafford, and Sundance. The nine rejected locations — Burleson, College Station, Firewheel, Irving, Keystone, Lewisville, Lubbock, Spring, and Tyler — did not survive the transaction.

"Most importantly, the buyers are taking 11 of the stores as operating stores, so we're preserving those jobs and those lease spaces for the benefit of the people that have the economic interest there," said Matthew Okin of Okin Adams Bartlett Curry LLP, who represents Razzoo's in the bankruptcy proceeding.

On March 11, 2026, Razzoo's, Inc. and its parent Razzoo's Holdings, Inc. filed a Joint Combined Chapter 11 Plan and Disclosure Statement in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Texas, Houston Division (Case No. 25-90522). The plan proposes the creation of a "Cajun Café Liquidating Trust" to collect remaining estate assets, including cash on hand and retained legal claims, and distribute proceeds to creditors in order of statutory priority under the Bankruptcy Code.

The collapse of a chain founded in Dallas in 1991 reflects a brutal stretch for casual dining. In court filings, CEO Philip Parsons pointed directly at the competitive pressure squeezing mid-tier restaurant concepts. "The sales have continued to be unfavorable to forecasts in light of the heavy competition among casual dining chains to attract consumers searching for the best value to fit their strained budgets," Parsons said in his declaration supporting the bankruptcy filing.

The chain's troubles ran deeper than competitor promotions. Razzoo's cited significant consumer behavior shifts toward delivery and affordability since the COVID-19 pandemic, a heavily seasonal revenue model built around crawfish — crawfish season started earlier in 2025 than in 2024, and falling retail crawfish prices cut directly into sales — along with burdensome leases, inflation, and high interest rates. The chain specifically flagged heavy marketing and discounting by Chili's and Applebee's as having eroded its customer traffic.

Before the October 2025 filing, Razzoo's had already closed four underperforming locations in 2024 and 2025, shrinking from a peak of roughly 23 to 24 locations to 20 by petition day. The company listed both assets and liabilities between $10 million and $50 million in its filings. After the October 1 petition, First Horizon Bank initially declined to provide post-petition financing, prompting negotiations with a third-party lender, TJF Financial, LLC. Following an emergency hearing on October 3, 2025, First Horizon ultimately agreed to serve as the debtor-in-possession lender, with the court entering an interim DIP order on October 7, 2025.

Razzoo's is not alone in a rough season for the casual-dining segment. Bravo Brio Restaurants LLC filed its second bankruptcy in roughly five years in August, and Greek chain Opa! Authentic Greek Cuisine followed with liquidation-focused Chapter 11 proceedings in September. The nine Razzoo's locations that did not transfer to ThirtyThree97 LLC represent the permanent end for workers who had no advance public warning — a pattern the chain's own USA TODAY coverage acknowledged when it described employees "left in the dark" by sudden closures.