Ponderosa to reopen under new ownership
Owner of same eatery in Clare takes over
A Mt. Pleasant restaurant thought closed for good has apparently found new life under new ownership.
A sign along Pickard street indicated that Ponderosa, 1301 E. Pickard, noted that it would soon reopen under new ownership on Friday morning. A photo of the sign was posted on social media, and later shared by the Facebook account of the Clare Ponderosa, which noted that the two shared an owner.
The owner was identified as Darren Clark, whose Linkedin page says he worked for Labelle Management as a division manager before leaving in October 2014 to work for Inspired Concepts. His page says he worked as a division manager for that company until May 2016. He left and started his own company in August of that time.
His Linkedin page says he owns Ponderosas in Clare, West Branch, Gaylord, Bay City and Coldwater.
Inspired Concepts was the company that
owned Ponderosa until it closed in March 2020 during the COVID-19 shutdown. It was founded by a number of former Labelle Management employees who split off to manage Labelle’s restaurants when that company decided to focus on real estate.
The company had filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in January of last year, and as the case wound its way through federal bankruptcy court, Ponderosa became one of two casualties.
Part of the company’s reorganization was to close the restaurant permanently if a new owner couldn’t be found. Their reorganization plan seemed to indicate that they’d given up on finding new ownership.
A call was placed to Clark for more information, including whether the liquor license that Ponderosa held was part of the purchase agreement. He has yet to respond.