Clawsing time for Red Lobsters

Red Lobster abruptly closed at least 50 restaurants nationwide Monday — including over a dozen in New York and New Jersey, blindsiding seafood chain employees.

The casual-dining chain is expected to file for bankruptcy as early as next week as it seeks to pare down its debt load, The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday.

TAGeX Brands, a restaurant liquidator, said it is auctioning off kitchen items and furniture from shuttered Red Lobster locations as part of its “largest restaurant equipment sale ever.”

Fourteen locations in New York and New Jersey were “temporarily closed” for the foreseeable future, according to Red Lobster’s website, as the struggling company weighed a possible Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing.

The shutdown locations include Lakewood, Buffalo, Amherst, Williamsville, Rochester, Poughkeepsie, Stony Brook, Kingston, Scarsdale and Nanuet in New York and Ledgewood, Lawrenceville, East Brunswick and Bridgewater in New Jersey.

Red Lobster — which has 649 locations nationwide — hasn’t publicly commented on the closures.

Employees and customers at a Red Lobster in Buffalo were greeted with a sign taped on the glass window that marked the restaurant’s closure, according to WKBW.

“This location is closed. We look forward to serving you at another Red Lobster location in the future,” the sign read.

Employee Ramon Garcia told the outlet that he learned of his store’s shutdown from a colleague.

Corporate officials allegedly only reached out when they informed the workers that they had three days to clear everything out of the location.

“This happened out of nowhere. All the people that we work with, they’re losing their jobs and not knowing what to expect after that,” Garcia said. “It’s taking a toll on them.”

“I didn’t know we were going bankrupt, but I kind of knew, if you know what I’m saying,” Garcia said. “They were cutting back on a lot of stuff.”

The restaurant blamed the “Ultimate Endless Shrimp” deal, which allows customers to spend $20 on all-you-can-eat shrimp, for its $11 million loss in the third quarter last year.

In March, Red Lobster appointed veteran bankruptcy expert Jonathan Tibus as its new CEO.

Red Lobster is closing 50 locations nationwide, including several in New York like one in Buffalo, where employee Ramon Garcia (inset) found out he was out of a job through a co-worker. A sign announcing the closure was taped to the glass window in front.