Restaurant closing: Grand Lux Café to shut its Boca Raton location

The Grand Lux Café, a 15-year fixture at the Town Center mall in Boca Raton, will close at the end of January, a parent-company representative informed city officials and Florida’s Department of Economic Opportunity (DEO) in a Nov. 23 letter.

The closing, which is expected on Jan. 31, will leave about 105 employees jobless, according to the notice sent by Sidney M. Greathouse, vice president of legal services for The Cheesecake Factory corporation, which owns Grand Lux, to Boca Raton Mayor Scott Singer and City Manager Leif J. Ahnell.

“There is no union that represents employees at this facility and affected employees do not have bumping rights,” reads Greathouse’s notice.

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The notice was sent in accordance with the U.S. Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act, which requires employers to reveal pending mass layoffs. Bumping rights would allow some employees to be reassigned within the company.  

Among those to be affected by the restaurant’s closing are seven managers, 1 management trainee, 22 line cooks, five prep cooks, 29 servers and runners, eight bussers, five bartenders, four dessert-line workers, one store accountant, 11 dishwashers, five cashiers, one steward, five hosts and one cleaner, according to the notice.

Grand Lux Café opened at Town Center in the fall of 2006. Its concept rang familiar to Cheesecake Factory fans accustomed to the bustle beneath the ornate, soaring ceilings, the sprawling menus and baked-to-order desserts.  

The California-based Cheesecake Factory company closed another Grand Lux Café location in December 2020. The Aventura restaurant closing left 101 employees out of work, according to that year’s WARN filing.

“As you know, business conditions rapidly and suddenly deteriorated during the continuing COVID-19 crisis, national emergency, and state and local shutdown orders,” Greathouse wrote to state and Aventura city officials in October 2020. “The Grand Lux Café markets have softened over a period of several months and this is anticipated to continue.”

The Boca Raton closing will leave one Grand Lux Café restaurant in Florida, the location at the Sawgrass Mills mall in Sunrise.  

Grand Lux Café: The Boca Raton location at 6000 Glades Rd. will close Jan. 31, 2022.