The abrupt closure of a beloved Central Valley steakhouse has left employees reeling, including a single mother of two who is now searching for a new way to support her children.
Tahoe Joe’s Famous Steakhouse in Visalia shut down unexpectedly Monday, leaving more than 30 workers without jobs.
Crystal Ervin relied on her position as a bartender at the restaurant as her main source of income. She said she learned about the closure after arriving for work Monday and being told she would need to find another job.
An email about the shutdown had been sent earlier that day, but Ervin did not see it. She had been preparing for work as usual before her Monday morning shift—a routine she had followed for 15 years at the steakhouse.
A regional director told employees gathered at the restaurant that Tahoe Joe’s was closing because the business had never fully recovered from the COVID-19 pandemic, which severely damaged 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 Tahoe Joe’s left her “high and dry,” especially after she had recently purchased a home for her family.
DISCOVER MORE: Intoxicated Corvette Driver Involved in High-Speed Collision at 135 mph: Police Report
“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 businesses to provide workers with more advance notice of a closure.
“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 closure leaves only two Tahoe Joe’s Famous Steakhouse locations operating: 7006 N. Cedar Ave. in Fresno and 9000 Ming Ave. in Bakersfield. Other restaurants in the chain closed or were bought out in previous 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 an atmosphere designed to evoke 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 is actively looking for additional work.
“I’m devastated to know this kind of pain, fear, uncertainty, especially as a single mama doing my best for my kiddos,” she wrote.
