Simi Valley Marie Callender's Location Shuttered on Sunday, June 12th
Wednesday, June 15, 2011 at 01:52PM 
As reported by the L.A. Times and other news sources, Marie Callender's parent company filed for bankruptcy protection and has shut down 31 locations nationwide. This impacted the Simi Valley Marie Callender's location at 20 W. Cochran Street. It did not impact the locations in Ventura and Camarillo.
It seems to me that as part of the bankruptcy reorganization plan, MC's should change its name. The name Callender's is so frustratingly difficult to spell correctly without looking at the name several times that it should be changed IMHO! :> Come on, for most of us, not just in school, but for our entire lives, we struggle to correctly spell the word "calendar" with an "a" at the end rather than an "e" (i.e. calender) but I still see this word misspelled ALL THE TIME!
So there's good ole' Marie Callender's, who not only spells it counter to our decades of schooling and corrections, with an "e," but then continues to confound our brains by adding an additional "l" to the name.
If nothing else, change the name to Marie Calendar's and make it easier for us to spell it without getting brain freeze.
Yah, yah, I know the place was founded in Long Beach in 1948 by people with the last name Callender. Don Callender named it after his mom, Marie. What a great son! But the chain was sold in 1986, so 25 years and a bankruptcy filing later, maybe it's time to reinvigorate the name. Whatever it takes to make it easier to spell.
That is all. Conejo Joe's brilliant idea of the day for a company in bankruptcy.
Reader Comments (3)
My brother works in the food service supply business. He says that this is a frequently used tactic when restaurant chains want to lower costs while they reorganize or when they want to sell to other companies. An example would be Claim Jumpers. The story came out that the Thousand Oaks location was going to lay off 65 employees and could eventually close. The probably used this as leverage for a more favorable lease arrangement or to make themselves more attractive to sell. I would not be surprised if Marie Callender's was reborn as a Perkins restaurant which is the the parent company of both chains. With Appleby's it was a francisee that wanted unload some restaurants. The Conejo Valley has lost many chain restaurants such as Bakers Square, Bob's, Staurt Andersons, and Sizzlers are just a few examples but the chain continues to operate in other communities. Marie Callenders previously had a location on Avenida de Los Arboles that closed and became a Cisco's
Good point, Ken, and interesting to see what has happened to some of the chains in town. Of course, the flip side is that we've seen a lot of new restaurants, including many chains, pop up, like TGIF, Chili's, Olive Garden (coming), Red Lobster (coming) and others. I think part of the challenge of the older chains is finding a way to "upgrade" to keep up with the newer restaurants. Must not be easy to do.
Now I have to go to Camarillo for a decent pie!