Smoking Monkey Pizza files for Chapter 11 after Spokane closure

Smoking Monkey Pizza’s Spokane closure has now become a bankruptcy story. TB Enterprises LLC, the chain’s parent, filed Chapter 11 protection in U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Western District of Washington in Seattle on May 12, listing up to $50,000 in assets and $100,000 to $500,000 in liabilities.

The filing turns the question from expansion to survival. Chapter 11 can let a restaurant keep operating while it renegotiates with creditors, but on the floor it usually means tighter ordering, slower maintenance, and more uncertainty for managers trying to keep shifts covered. In a small chain, that pressure lands fast on cooks, dishwashers, bartenders, hosts, and servers, who often see the signs before a closure notice is posted. The largest unsecured creditors included the Washington Department of Revenue, Sysco, Chase Card Services, Gravity Payments, Greco and Puget Sound Energy.

Smoking Monkey Pizza had three Washington locations in Renton, Seattle and Spokane before the Spokane store shut down about two months before the filing. The Spokane restaurant had opened on Aug. 16, 2025, in a 2,400-square-foot space with seating for 60 at 816 W. Sprague Ave., across from The Davenport Hotel. Renton remains at 613 South 3rd St., and Seattle is at 3111 W. McGraw St. The company’s website still pointed to Renton and Seattle, while the Spokane unit was already gone.

That gap between the brand story and the cash story is what workers should watch. Smoking Monkey had built a local reputation that made the filing more surprising: the chain won Renton’s Best Pizza in 2024 and got a 95%+ quality score from Quality Business Awards in 2025. Owner Tushar Batra, who goes by Tom, described the concept as “a vibe” rather than just an order-your-pizza place, and he had talked about opening 36 stores, with gorilla statues part of the branding.

The menu matched that ambition, with 35 pizza varieties, 11 pasta dishes, eight sandwiches, five calzones, three strombolis, nine salads and five desserts. At the Spokane opening, the restaurant reportedly sold more than 400 meatballs in its first week, a sign that the company was still pushing growth even as its finances weakened.

For restaurant workers, that is the lesson here. A growth narrative can hide cash-flow strain until the signs show up in the dining room: fewer deliveries, deferred repairs, quieter shifts, and management that starts sounding vague about scheduling and inventory. The National Restaurant Association’s 2026 outlook says the industry still expects $1.55 trillion in sales and more than 100,000 new jobs, but it also points to persistent cost pressure and uneven traffic. Smoking Monkey Pizza shows how quickly those numbers can translate into a store-by-store fight to stay open.