Charcoal Grill & Rotisserie, a fixture of Southeastern Wisconsin dining since 1993, has shut down all five of its remaining restaurants, leaving workers without jobs and regulars staring at locked doors with disconnected phone lines. The closures affected locations in West Bend, Oak Creek, Racine, and Burlington, according to its website.
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported that Charcoal Grill’s Facebook and Instagram pages have been disabled and that phone numbers for every location have been disconnected. As of Wednesday, no one from any Charcoal Grill & Rotisserie location had responded to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s request for comment on the reasons behind the shutdown. The chain launched its first restaurant in Racine in 1996, according to Urban Milwaukee.
At the Oak Creek location on West Ryan Road, a sign signed by a general manager told customers the restaurant was closed until further notice, per the Journal Sentinel’s report. Ashley Schmidt, who managed that location and had worked in the restaurant industry for 18 years, called the closure heartbreaking. She had worked at Charcoal Grill & Rotisserie since early March and, per Ashley Schmidt, lost her job when all locations closed at once.
A Chain Already Shrinking for Years
A Chain Already Shrinking for Years At one point, Charcoal Grill had seven locations across the region, according to a 2021 report, but the footprint had already been shrinking for years. In May 2024, Grafton village officials approved plans to demolish the chain’s Port Washington Road restaurant there to make way for a Chase Bank branch, as reported by the Ozaukee Press, which noted that the property owner cited severe staffing difficulties as a factor in that closure…