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Tattooed Chef Inc., a plant-based food producer with properties in Albuquerque, is filing for bankruptcy, with the company citing an inability to turn a profit, the Albuquerque Business First reported. While the Paramount, Calif.-based company did not comment on the details of the extent of employee layoffs either in New Mexico or elsewhere, it said in a statement on June 30 announcing its intention to file for bankruptcy that “the Company has provided notice of intended layoffs to its employees in California and New Mexico.” In addition, the company on June 30 filed a worker adjustment and retraining notification (WARN) with the New Mexico Department of Workforce Solutions that listed the total number of layoffs at 272, with a layoff date of Aug. 30. Tattooed Chef acquired Albuquerque-based New Mexico Food Distributors Inc. and Karsten Tortilla Factory LLC in a $34.1 million deal in May 2021. The company was awarded $190,424 by the state of New Mexico under the Job Training Incentive Program in 2021, with the money intended to be used for on-the-job or classroom training for newly created positions for businesses either relocating or expanding their presence in New Mexico. The funds were not awarded outright, but instead the company was able to be reimbursed by the State with them once the training was complete, Tattooed Chef never filed for reimbursement, so no funds were disbursed, Bruce Krasnow, public information officer at the New Mexico Economic Development Department, said. Tattooed Chef was backed by Kansas City, Mo.-based UMB Capital, a subsidiary of UMB Bank, who invested $7 million in the company before it went public in 2020.

Surge Transportation, a digital freight brokerage founded in 2016 by Omar Singh and based in Jacksonville, Fla., has filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, FreightWaves.com reported. Sixteen of its top 20 creditors are factoring companies that pay small carriers. Officials at Surge told FreightWaves.com that the company is working with a financial sponsor and hopes to get its bankruptcy plan approved at a hearing this week. Over the past seven years, Surge grew to a workforce of more than 100 people and earned gross revenues of approximately $150 million in 2022. The bootstrapped 3PL built automated load-matching and pricing technology similar to its venture-funded competitors Uber Freight and Convoy and offered a suite of direct integrations into transportation management systems. Since the beginning of last year, the freight market has experienced a significant downturn. The fading of pandemic-era stimulus programs cooled the goods economy, and when combined with the abundant capacity that had built up, sent transportation prices through the floor.

Trucking company Yellow is preparing to file for bankruptcy, according to people familiar with the matter, heightening the threat that one of the nation’s largest freight carriers will shut down as customers abandon it amid a cash crunch and union negotiations, the Wall Street Journal reported. A bankruptcy filing by Yellow would put it at high risk of a liquidation since its customers already have started to abandon the trucker in large numbers, some of the people said. The company could seek bankruptcy court protection as soon as this week, though no decision has been made and Yellow continues to explore other options, they said. A Yellow representative said Wednesday that “in keeping with the fiduciary responsibility of the company’s executives, the company continues to prepare for a range of contingencies.” Yellow has been losing thousands of shipments to other operators because of the risk that a labor dispute will disrupt its operations, according to equity analysts and industry executives. The company averted a planned strike this week by the Teamsters union that represents most of its workforce, but the customer exodus has continued. Yellow has seen freight volumes fall 80% in recent days, according to a research report Tuesday by TD Cowen.

After more than 150 years of newsgathering, the Pulitzer Prize-winning newspaper Santa Barbara News-Press has posted its last online edition a month after the News-Press ceased publication of its print newspaper and went all-digital, the Los Angeles Times reported. The death knell for the once-mighty but long-floundering News-Press came in the form of a bankruptcy filing last week by Ampersand Publishing LLC, the entity by which the newspaper does business. Ampersand’s chapter 7 bankruptcy filing was authorized during a meeting “on or about” May 1, nearly three months before it was filed Friday in U.S. Bankruptcy Court for California’s Central District, according to federal court records. The move also comes about three months after the newspaper relocated its operations and staff from the landmark building on Santa Barbara’s De la Guerra Plaza — where it had been housed for the last 101 years — to its printing plant in Goleta, the Santa Barbara Independent reported.

San Francisco's landmark Anchor Brewing Co., which has announced plans to cease operations after more than 126 years, says it's willing to consider a takeover by employees, CBSNews.com reported. The company that describes itself as the nation's first craft brewery said Wednesday that it has stopped brewing and will file for bankruptcy because of declining sales. But that could change if employees come through with an offer to purchase the company, spokesman Sam Singer said Saturday. "We have received an e-mail from Anchor's union spokesperson stating that the 'workers of Anchor Brewing have met, discussed and decided to launch an effort to purchase the brewery,'" Singer said in a statement. "This inquiry was on behalf of an unidentified group of Anchor employees, not the union itself." "Given our deep respect for the Anchor union and our team members, should our employees put forward a bona-fide, legally binding offer to buy the company, one that includes a verifiable source of funds, we would gladly consider it," Singer said. In its announcement Wednesday, the company said its only option was to cease operations because of the impacts of the pandemic, inflation and a highly competitive market. While the company is interested in an employee takeover, "time is running short," Singer said Saturday. He said Anchor is moving forward with plans to file for bankruptcy through chapter 7 liquidation or chapter 11 reorganization.

Residents, nurses and local politicians gathered at a town hall meeting in Hollister, Calif., to voice their concerns about the future of Hazel Hawkins Memorial Hospital after the San Benito Health Care District's recent chapter 9 bankruptcy filing, Becker's Hospital Review reported. Members of the California Nurses Association recently voted "no confidence" in both the Hazel Hawkins board and the administration and argued that the bankruptcy filing was a potentially catastrophic and unnecessary step in resolving the hospital's financial issues, according to the report. During the July 6 town hall meeting, Mike Rabourn, research lead for the California Nurses Association, argued that the financial health of the healthcare district is not as dire as it seems. "Ultimately, what we found, in spite of all their tales of woe, when you look under the hood, the district is actually not doing so bad, especially in the last six months," Mr. Rabourn said, according to benitolink.com. "As of May, it’s actually in quite a strong financial position according to their own financial reports. I think everybody is surprised that they are so aggressively pursuing this bankruptcy process when they’ve actually engineered quite a financial recovery since the fiscal emergency." Mr. Rabourn argued that the hospital district is not financially insolvent — despite projections that it will run out of cash by November or December 2024 — and that it currently has more than 35 days cash on hand and recorded about $2 million in net income over the past 11 months.

Aruze Gaming America — the slot machine developer behind Shoot to Win Craps, Go Go Claw and other electronic table games — will close its Las Vegas headquarters next month and lay off 100 workers, according to a notice filed with the state, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported. The closure is expected to be effective Aug. 18, according to a required notice to the Nevada Department of Employment, Training and Rehabilitation. Few other details were immediately available. Aruze representatives did not respond to additional questions about the closure by the time of publication. The closure comes roughly six months after the equipment manufacturer filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. The company said at the time that the filing was part of its efforts to restructure financially because of “external factors outside (their) control.” It listed a “garnishment judgment against Aruze resulting from a separate judgment against Aruze’s shareholder.”

A marketing firm in Raleigh, N.C., has filed for chapter 11 protection — a circumstance its attorney blames on rising wages, the Triangle Business Journal reported. Direct Marketing Group, which also goes by its initials, DMG, filed for bankruptcy reorganization on July 7. The company bills itself as developing digital marketing strategies for its clients. It was founded by Ryan Fuller, formerly a retail operations manager for Hendrick Automotive Group. The company's attorney, Danny Bradford, said a big part of the firm’s cash flow problems are tied to rising labor costs. Higher costs caused DMG to incur expensive short-term loans — and payments have impaired cash flow. As a result, the firm has to streamline its operations and reduce personnel, he said. “The reality is that higher wages are here to stay,” Bradford said, adding that DMG hopes to use software in order to increase productivity for the employees it’s retaining. DMG is not alone. Philip Sasser, a bankruptcy attorney in Cary who is not connected to DMG's case, said wage and labor issues have been a major driver of why business owners are reaching out to his firm about possible bankruptcies.