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St. Cloud, Minn.-based Granite City Food & Brewery announced that it has filed for chapter 11 protection to allow for a reorganization of its businesses, the St. Cloud Times reported. Granite City Food & Brewery's premier location opened in June 1999 in St. Cloud. Over the past two decades, the chain has expanded to 13 states. The company also operates Cadillac Ranch restaurants in four states. The company intends to file a motion seeking approval of auction and sale procedures, and has announced a possible sale to KRG Granite Acquisition LLC for $7.5 million plus certain liabilities. The transaction remains subject to bankruptcy court approval and an auction process, which is expected to conclude in February. Granite City has secured a $5 million debtor-in-possession loan, subject to bankruptcy court approval, to fund operations through the auction and sale process.

New York Granite Corp. has filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization, on the heels of a personal bankruptcy case that exposed the owner’s highly-leveraged finances, WestFairOnline.com reported. The stone countertop fabrication and installation business was founded in 2009 by Wieslaw Piasecki. New York Granite estimated assets of up to $50,000 and liabilities between $1 million and $10 million, in a petition filed Dec. 5 in federal bankruptcy court in Poughkeepsie, N.Y. The petition listed nearly $1.8 million owed to the top 20 unsecured creditors, including $765,887 to New York Business Development Corp. and $497,399 to Empire State Certified Development Corp. New York Granite also owes $523,414 to TD Bank for two 2015 loans secured by all assets. Piasecki filed a chapter 7 liquidation petition in March.

Celadon Group Inc. and its affiliate entities have filed for bankruptcy under chapter 11 of the U.S. bankruptcy code, and will shut down its business operations effective today, the Wall Street Journal reported. The shutdown, however, doesn’t include the Taylor Express business based in Hope Mills, N.C., which will continue to operate while Celadon explores a going concern sale of its operations, the trucking company said. “We have diligently explored all possible options to restructure Celadon and keep business operations ongoing, however, a number of legacy and market headwinds made this impossible to achieve,” Paul Svindland, chief executive officer of Celadon, said in the statement. Celadon in August engaged the former leader of trucking giant Swift Transportation Co. to help overhaul its truckload division after securing $165 million of new financing for its turnaround efforts.

Acosta Inc., the marketing firm owned by Carlyle Group LP, has gone bankrupt after big consumer-product firms decided to do more of the work themselves to keep up with changing consumer tastes, Bloomberg News reported. The company filed for chapter 11 protection in Wilmington, Del., with support from creditors on a plan that would hand them ownership of a reorganized company and slash $3 billion of long-term debt. Creditors including Elliott Management Corp., Oaktree Capital Management, Davidson Kempner Capital Management and Nexus Capital Management agreed to the deal, interim Chief Financial Officer Matthew Laurie said in a court declaration. Acosta had skipped an Oct. 1 bond interest payment and previously said that it was working on a plan to hand control over to creditors. The deal provides $325 million in new capital and preserves about 30,000 jobs, Laurie said. Acosta said it has commitments from lenders for a $150 million loan to keep the company operating during the reorganization.

Catskill Distilling Co. Ltd., better known to devotees of alcoholic spirits as the Dancing Cat Distillery, has petitioned U.S. bankruptcy court in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., for chapter 11 protection, westfaironline.com reported. The Bethel, N.Y.-based company estimated that assets and liabilities range from $1 million to $10 million. Its largest secured debt is nearly $2.7 million to Jeff Bank. The petition lists $5.3 million in unsecured claims by the 20 largest creditors, including $2.3 million to Stacy Cohen, the company president. Dancing Cat Distillery opened in 2011, with financial assistance from the Sullivan County Industrial Development Agency. It operates the Dancing Cat Saloon and the Stray Cat Gallery and plays off its proximity to the nearby dairy farm made famous by the 1969 Woodstock Festival.

San Diego-based Bumble Bee Foods filed for chapter 11 protection in Delaware yesterday and announced it has agreed to sell the company's assets to Taiwan-based FCF Co. Ltd. for $925 million, USA Today reported. The company said that it has "received new financing commitments from its existing lenders that will provide sufficient liquidity" to fund the business through the closing of the sale, which could happen within 60 to 90 days. The bankruptcy comes more than two years after the company pleaded guilty to conspiring to fix the cost of canned and pouch tuna. The company agreed to pay a $25 million criminal fine over five years as part of a plea agreement with the Department of Justice. According to court records, $17 million of the fine remains outstanding and the company is facing other legal expenses.

The defunct for-profit Globe University has filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, saying it owes many millions of dollars in connection with fraud actions taken against the school by the state of Minnesota, the Minneapolis Star Tribune reported. The petition filed in federal court on Wednesday by the former Woodbury, Minn.-based school comes two weeks after the Minnesota Supreme Court sided with former criminal justice students at Globe and its affiliated Minnesota School of Business (MSB) in ruling that anyone who attended the programs can receive a tuition refund. The filing lists Globe’s assets ranging from $100,000 to $500,000, with debts from $10 million to $50 million. The state’s claims are the largest by far among the creditors, but the U.S. Education Department also has a claim of roughly $850,000 in connection with student loans. The state attorney general’s office sued the schools five years ago, alleging they misled students by suggesting they would be able to work as police and probation officers. The students, among them a large number of veterans using GI Bill benefits, enrolled in the schools’ criminal justice program only to later discover that their degree failed to meet requirements for becoming police and probation officers in Minnesota.

New York ride-hailing business Juno USA LP filed for bankruptcy protection, blaming its demise on minimum wage regulations and mounting lawsuits from drivers, riders and competitors, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. The ride-hailing service, which launched in early 2016 and was acquired by Israeli startup Gett in 2017, had contracted with roughly 50,000 drivers in the New York area, providing nearly 50,000 rides a day at its peak, according to papers filed by Juno’s chief restructuring officer, Melissa Kibler, in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Wilmington, Del. The bankruptcy comes shortly after Gett said that it was shuttering Juno while striking a partnership with Lyft Inc. to expand in the U.S. Ride-hailing companies are grappling with efforts by several states to extend employment protections to gig workers. In the face of additional regulation, the ride-hailing industry has been consolidating and pushing back against government measures that could upend their business models. Gett, which bought Juno in a $200 million equity-based deal, said that the company’s demise stemmed from “misguided regulations” in New York City. While the Juno app has been shut down, the company said that it wants to transform itself to offer “business-to-business” transportation services instead of relying on a “business-to-consumer” model. The company said it would develop a chapter 11 plan with Gett that would fund recoveries to creditors while Juno’s operating entities would be liquidated. Gett is providing $4.5 million in bankruptcy loans to finance the process, subject to court approval.

Approach Resources Inc. filed for bankruptcy Monday, the latest in a string of chapter 11 filings by financially distressed oil-and-gas drilling companies grappling with a decline in commodity prices, the Wall Street Journal reported. Fort Worth, Texas-based Approach said that it will explore a restructuring of its balance sheet, a going-concern sale of its business and other alternatives while under chapter 11 protection. The company has drilling operations in West Texas, having acquired oil and gas properties in the Permian Basin since 2004. More than 30 oil-and-gas producers filed for bankruptcy this year through September, according to a report by the law firm Haynes & Boone LLP, already surpassing the number of filings for each of the previous two years. Approach reported revenue of about $14.7 million and a net loss of approximately $13.6 million for the second quarter. The company reported total debt obligations of $407.2 million, according to papers filed in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Houston. Read more. (Subscription required.) 

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