Even Stevens sandwich chain to keep Boise location open amid financial troubles

Publish date: 2024-05-08

BOISE — Even Stevens has declared bankruptcy, but the Salt Lake City-based sandwich chain is keeping its downtown Boise location.

In the last week, the 5-year-old company with a business model centered around donating a sandwich for every one sold is in some of the final stages of a complete restructuring in order to make the company solvent. Chief Restructuring Officer Brooks Pickering said he came on board to try to fix the floundering company in July. Since then, 250 employees were let go and 11 stores were closed.

“The company has gone from an $800,000-a-month loss, and it had been doing that for a long time, and is now at break even. So we’ve done a complete management restructuring and restructuring of operations,” he said. “It’s been a pretty massive undertaking.”

The closures included locations in Arizona, Texas, Colorado and Provo, Utah, but the company will keep stores in Utah, Washington state and Idaho. Pickering said the Boise location on Bannock Street is one of the company’s top performers.

“It’s a great location,” he said. “We love Boise, we think that’s an expansion city for us, and it’s a profitable store. We’re very bullish on Boise.”

The company publicly announced it would stop its charitable giving in August under the restructuring, but Pickering said there are plans to resume this in the future. In Boise the company gave to the Boise Rescue Mission, Corpus Christi House, St. Vincent de Paul and Idaho Foodbank.

The bankruptcy will be resolved in 120 days. Currently the company is in negotiations to sell to a large equity firm or a private investor, but Pickering could not provide any more details on a possible sale.

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