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Godfather’s Pizza reportedly closes
Published 10:52am Wednesday, September 12, 2012Godfather’s Pizza in Fergus Falls appears to have closed.
Restaurant owner Mike Hastings did not immediately return phone calls this morning. The restaurant is located off the West Lincoln Avenue frontage road near the WestRidge Mall.
The Journal has heard from multiple sources that the restaurant gave notice to recent customers, including the concessions stand at the Fergus Falls High School, and staff that it would be closing down, effective Tuesday.
Godfather’s had previously been in WestRidge Mall before moving to its current location several years ago.
Only decent pizza in town other than Papa Murphys. I’ll miss them.
The Godfathers in Alexandria has been closed for a while too. We want our Godfathers back! I am fairly sure that the closings are not because Godfather’s wasn’t making it. Well, whatever is going on, I hope someone buys Alex and Fergus right away. I hope that the restaurants open again really soon.
There were comments around town that the road closings around the Godfather’s location, as a consequence of building the new bridge and approaches, made it so difficult to get the restaurant that people gave up and started patronizing other vendors. Looks like that Godfathers is the first casualty of the new bridge. Sad.
I really hope you’re joking. None of the road work blocks access to Godfather’s or any businesses near it.
Godfather’s will be missed. Used to spend my youth there when they were located in the mall, listening to the jukebox and getting up to no good.
I don’t believe it had anything to do with the bridge construction – everyone in Fergus knows where the building was located and could have easily gone there, had they really wanted a slice of pizza. Just turn as if going to the mall and swing left, folks. Not that hard.
If you do a google search, you’ll find that a _lot_ of Godfather’s locations have closed in the last year or so. It doesn’t help that many of their stores are old and outdated, and there was obviously no interest with the ownership doing renovations or building a new facilites like the owners in Fergus did. Also, the franchise agreements might have been up(and the local owner could have decided not to renew due to the location being less profitable? Or the parent company may have made a decision not to renew.
Godfathers was affected negatively by the bridge and road construction, and various economic problems!
Oh Man I worked there for a while and Mark was the best supervisor anyone could have. I went through Wyoming or Utah last year and stopped at a “Godfathers” I found along the way. It was closed too. I was soooooooooo sad!
The Hastings family deserve better than this poorly reported, so called “news story” from Ryan Howard and the Journal. How about a feature story celebrating the contribution Godfathers Pizza made to our community? Countless jobs for young people. Unwavering support for locally owned businesses. Strong advocate and supporter of our schools. Before you report on a business closing, maybe get some facts for the story first. Your choice of words such as “appears”, “reportedly” and “did not immediately return phone calls” are offensive to the people of Fergus Falls and all of us that work hard to support our community. Godfathers has been a staple business in Fergus Falls for more than 30 years. They deserve some respect and dignity…and in my opinion, an engraved apology. -Rich Seland
I think Ryan made the right choice of words there. Noone from the Godfathers company has come out and made an appearance or sent out a news bulletin. From what I heard, there were people acctually in the resturaunt when Ottertail power cut the lights. The worker themselves didnt know what was happening. I also heard that for a few weeks now they were running short on alot of ingredients to make the pizzas and when a worker would call headquarters about they would say the truck should be there soon..If thats the case..I dont really care what they did for this city..because that is publicity was good for them too. But when you have patrons there paying good money and they cant even get a glass of pop because they ran out and then when you sit down to eat…the lights go out…thats just wrong..Its been three days now and still no word of what has happened…Imagine what the workers feel like…No notice what so ever and then the lights are shut off…and no job..Not even given a chance to go look for one.