The abrupt closure of a beloved Central Valley steakhouse has left employees reeling, including a single mother of two who is now searching for another way to support her children.
Tahoe Joe’s Famous Steakhouse in Visalia shut down without warning Monday, leaving more than 30 workers out of jobs.
Crystal Ervin depended on her bartending position as her main source of income. She said she learned the restaurant was closing only after arriving for work Monday and being told she would need to find a new job.
An email about the closure had been sent earlier that day, but Ervin never saw it. She had been preparing for her Monday morning shift, just as she had for the previous 15 years.
A regional director told employees gathered at the restaurant that Tahoe Joe’s was closing because the business never fully recovered from the COVID-19 pandemic, which dealt a severe blow to small businesses across the country.
“I was shocked. I was shocked. I felt betrayed. And to be honest, I felt hurt,” she told YourCentralValley.
“I felt like we just did not matter, you know, ever or at all… We had been in there so long just to be tossed like rags, you know, with nobody having any direction to go.”
Ervin said the closure left her “high and dry,” coming just two months after she purchased a home for her family.
“It was pretty devastating. I’m a single mom. I have two kids. I just bought a home about two months ago. And so to be left high and dry like that was, was pretty, it’s still detrimental,” she said.
The single mother said she hopes California’s employment laws will eventually require companies to provide workers with more advance notice.
“I feel like if they could have given employers two weeks, heck, even one week, it gets them a jump start on getting an unemployment [claim] filled,” she said. “It gives them a jump on starting to find another job before they’re just left out on the street without anything.”
The Visalia shutdown leaves Tahoe Joe’s Famous Steakhouse with only two remaining locations: 7006 N. Cedar Ave. in Fresno and 9000 Ming Ave. in Bakersfield. Other restaurants in the chain have closed or been bought out in recent years, including the original Fresno location on West Shaw Avenue, which shut down in 2016.
Tahoe Joe’s is known for its thick, charbroiled steaks and a setting designed to resemble a “warm, friendly, lodge with pine log beams stretched throughout spacious ceilings and hand-painted teepee lamps.”
Ervin said on Facebook Tuesday that she still has a part-time job, but she is actively searching for new employment.
“I’m devastated to know this kind of pain, fear, uncertainty, especially as a single mama doing my best for my kiddos,” she wrote.