The sun is very slowly setting on a once-glorious era where you could put Bolognese sauce on corn chips or stick your head under a running ice cream tap and not a single person in the building could stop you. One of Australia’s last remaining Sizzler restaurants is set to close its doors in just a few short days, bringing the remaining number left in the country down to single digits.
Hanging on like the last resisting tribes of Gaul, Sizzler – the 90s family eating powerhouse where you could’ve probably made a mattress out of cheese toast and slept there for a week and barely anyone would’ve batted an eyelid – has begun a slow and painful slide into obscurity in Australia in recent years, with outlet numbers dwindling to a mere handful concentrated largely in Queensland.
But as of March 1st, the outlet in Rockhampton will be no more, with the store set to close its doors for good.
The restaurant is located within Rockhampton’s Stockland Shopping Centre, which will soon be undergoing renovations. But even after the doors to the centre are reopened, Sizzler’s will remain closed, with operating company Collins Foods confirming the company will use the opportunity to wind up operations in the beef capital of Australia.
The building that particular Sizzler is currently housed in has been earmarked for demolition, according to redevelopment plans.
In a short statement, Sizzler officials confirmed that “Sizzler Rockhampton will trade as usual until its last day, Sunday March 1, 2020,” before asserting “the announcement relates to Sizzler Rockhampton only and all other Sizzler restaurants remain open for business.”
That announcement leaves just 9 Sizzler restaurants remaining in Australia: Caboolture, Loganholme, Maroochydore, Mermaid Beach, and Toowoomba in Queensland, Innaloo, Kelmscott, and Morley over in WA, and Campbelltown as the lone remaining Sizzler in New South Wales.
It’s a grim time, friends. Hold your cheese toast close.
