There are some stories you chase, and others that keep showing up on your plate whether you ordered them or not. Lately, MCL has been the latter. Locations are closing, answers are scarce, and a chain that’s unassumingly fed generations of Hoosiers now seems to be slipping away without much explanation.
Pardon my insistent coverage of MCL. I’m certainly interested in what’s going on with the longtime chain of cafeteria-style restaurants, but, frankly, these posts bring in all kinds of views! From a statistical standpoint, that helps me keep the lights on for esoteric deep-dives that no one else seems to care about.
Back in February, news broke that MCL’s only Illinois outpost, at 2151 Wabash Avenue in Springfield, suddenly closed its doors for good- pulling the rug out from at least one commenter here. The restaurant opened next to Sears at White Oaks Mall in 19771, then moved to its Wabash Avenue spot, a former Chi-Chi’s, thirty years later2. When Capitol City Now reached out to MCL’s corporate office in Indy, emails were returned as undeliverable. A phone number didn’t provide contact info for a spokesperson3.
That was the same experience I had when I reached out to corporate after word trickled out from employees that Muncie’s location would close on March 29th. I heard nary a peep back! The closure of Muncie’s branch makes sense since the mall that houses it will soon be demolished, but I was there yesterday with Brett Yoder of Hoosier Gym Journey and everything seemed like business as usual. As a matter of fact, it was busier than I’d ever seen the place!
At this point, the silence is almost as noteworthy as the closures themselves. Maybe there’s a restructuring effort behind the scenes. Maybe it’s something more abrupt. Or maybe this is just how the end of an era unfolds- not with a press release or a carefully managed farewell, but with disconnected phone numbers, bouncing emails, and a handful of dining rooms that simply go dark one by one.
At any rate, for those of us who’ve only recently discovered MCL -or, in some cases, rediscovered it- it feels like we showed up just in time to watch the curtain fall. That’s a real shame! Get it while you can, you guys: soon, there will only be eight left.
Sources Cited
1 MCL Cafeteria (1977, April 24). The State Journal-Register [Springfield]. p. 50…