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Sears Holdings Corp. won court approval Monday of a chapter 11 liquidation plan requiring suppliers that kept its shelves stocked in bankruptcy to wait for their money or take a discounted payoff, the Wall Street Journal reported. Bankruptcy Judge Robert Drain said that he would sign off on a creditor repayment plan despite the company’s admission that it doesn’t have the cash to pay essential bills, including tens of millions of dollars owed to companies that supplied goods while Sears tried to stay afloat earlier this year. The decision marks the “beginning of the end” of Sears’s bankruptcy case after nearly a year, said David Wander of Davidoff Hutcher & Citron LLP, a lawyer for a number of Sears vendors and creditors. Judge Drain said yesterday that the Sears shell company left behind after former Chairman Edward Lampert bought out the best stores is projected to be short by $36.5 million to $104.5 million in covering the payment obligations it needs to meet before exiting bankruptcy. Under the liquidation plan, unsecured creditors will recover 2.5 cents on the dollar.

Private-equity firm Bristol Capital Advisors LLC has made a $14 million offer to purchase boutique candy retailer Sugarfina Inc. out of bankruptcy, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. Bankruptcy Judge Mary Walrath yesterday approved Los Angeles-based Bristol as the stalking-horse bidder, for Sugarfina’s assets. The offer is subject to higher offers at a proposed auction scheduled for later this month. Bristol’s all-cash bid is an alternative to an earlier offer for the candy retailer’s assets from private-equity firm TerraMar Capital LLC. When Sugarfina filed for bankruptcy, Judge Walrath said that she was concerned the earlier bid could tilt an auction because TerraMar had also offered to provide the retailer’s bankruptcy financing.

Dean & DeLuca, the gourmet grocer whose trend-setting New York store introduced Americans to international delicacies more than four decades ago, has shut its flagship location in Manhattan, Bloomberg News reported. The chain has been struggling to hold on amid stalling sales and a cutthroat competitive landscape, and suppliers have gone to court over unpaid bills. Some shelves at the main store were bare in recent weeks, and some other U.S. locations have been shuttered. Dean & DeLuca’s pioneering business model helped create a cohort of upscale gourmets, but now those same consumers are being targeted by bigger rivals with deeper pockets. Items that once were hard to get are now readily available from massive chains such as Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods and its online parent, Amazon.com Inc.

Forever 21 Canada is set to begin its liquidation sale today, shortly after the fast fashion retailer filed for bankruptcy protection in Canada and the U.S.  A sale order outlining the terms of the liquidation – which is expected to begin today — was approved by the Ontario Superior Court of Justice yesterday. According to court documents, the sale will wrap up by Nov. 30, but it could be extended or terminated early, if required. Forever 21 announced last week that it will shutter all 44 of its Canadian stores, the vast majority of which are unprofitable. Approximately 2,000 people work at Forever 21 stores located in Alberta, British Columbia, Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec and Nova Scotia.

Sears has agreed to set aside $3 million to compensate the beneficiaries of retired employees who died after the bankrupt retailer canceled their life insurance benefits in March, the Chicago Tribune reported. Attorneys representing Hoffman Estates, Ill.-based Sears Holdings and a committee of retirees presented their plan to resolve the dispute over benefits to U.S. Bankruptcy Court Judge Robert Drain at a Thursday court hearing. The deal still requires official court approval, but Judge Drain told attorneys it appeared to be “a reasonable settlement.” Sears, which filed for Chapter 11 reorganization last October, ended the roughly 29,000 retired employees’ life insurance benefits shortly after selling most of its remaining assets to Transform Holdco, an entity controlled by Sears’ former CEO and largest shareholder, Edward Lampert, and his hedge fund.

A group of fashion executives is preparing a roughly $220 million bid to take control of Barneys New York Inc., according to people familiar with the situation, as the bankrupt retailer seeks to avoid a liquidation, the Wall Street Journal reported. The group is led by Sam Ben-Avraham, who founded the hip New York retail store Atrium in the 1990s as well as the streetwear brand Kith and also operates fashion trade shows. Ben-Avraham is assembling a consortium of retail veterans and brand investors to help fund the bid, the people said. At a bankruptcy hearing yesterday, Judge Cecelia Morris extended the deadline for bids until Oct. 11. Barneys’ lawyer said that the retailer was in negotiations with a single buyer, but didn’t name the party. Barneys filed for bankruptcy protection in August after the landlord of its Madison Avenue store nearly doubled the rent to $27.9 million. As part of its filing, it said it planned to shut most of its 13 department stores and nine warehouse stores, but would continue to operate seven locations, including on Madison Avenue.

After two years of refocusing itself, fast-fashion apparel purveyor rue21 recently opened its first store since emerging from bankruptcy, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported. Dubbed the Style Seeker Concept, the Robinson, Pa., store represents a new spin on the chain’s older store designs — a “bright white canvas allowing the great color and excitement of rue21’s fashion to pop,” said chief executive Michael C. Appel. The 4,800-square-foot space also showcases about 40 mannequins to help inspire shoppers’ sartorial senses. The concept was tested out in 10 stores before the company built the Robinson location from scratch. In the test locations, “We saw an immediate uplift in sales,” Mr. Appel said. More than 100 stores have gotten the facelift so far. The company plans to total out at 132 by the end of the year. Taking a sharp eye to its fleet of stores has been part of rue21’s mission over the last two years. In January 2017, the teen retailer operated 1,218 stores in 48 states. Now it has 697 in its fleet. Rue21 filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in May 2017. It emerged in September the same year.

A dozen restaurants up and down the West Coast have shuttered as the dust continues to settle around Seattle-based Restaurants Unlimited’s recent bankruptcy and sale, The Oregonian reported. Restaurants Unlimited, which backed dozens of West Coast restaurants, filed for chapter 11 protection in July. By then, the company had already closed two local restaurants, the Lloyd District’s Prime Rib + Chocolate Cake and Tigard’s Portland Seafood Grill. Last week, a U.S. bankruptcy court approved the $37.2 million sale of Restaurants Unlimited to Landry’s Inc., Bloomberg reported. The Houston-based dining giant, which previously gobbled up Portland’s McCormick & Schmicks in 2012, was able to cherry pick the properties it wanted to keep, including the Portland City Grill. In Oregon, Salem’s Newport Seafood Grill joined the previously reported closures of Pearl District taproom Henry’s Tavern and two Portland locations of the Stanford’s restaurant chain, according to the Statesman Journal. And in the Seattle area, Palomino, Stanford’s and three Henry’s Tavern locations were all closed for good, the Puget Sound Business Journalreported. Meanwhile, in the San Francisco Bay Area, Palomino and Kincaid’s Fish, Chop & Steakhouse didn’t make the Landry’s cut.

Dozens of Sears vendors are calling for a bankruptcy judge to convert the retailer’s chapter 11 into a liquidation, the New York Post reported. Sears Holdings — the former parent of Sears and Kmart, which has unloaded the company’s remaining stores to billionaire Eddie Lampert — is looking for a judge to approve a reorganization plan this week that would settle debts and distribute the 125-year-old company’s assets. A group of vendors, however, are demanding that Bankruptcy Judge Robert Drain convert the case to a chapter 7 liquidation and appoint an independent trustee to mediate their gripes. These vendors, who have not been paid in more than a year for the goods they shipped to Sears, are demanding that Sears’ lawyers not “bill one more hour to this estate,” according to a court filing on Monday. The filing is among dozens representing up to 70 vendors who have asked the court not to allow Sears to exit bankruptcy at a hearing scheduled for Oct. 3.

More than 70 percent of unpaid suppliers have pledged to keep delivering goods to the clothing retailer as it approaches the holiday shopping season in the U.S., a lawyer for Forever 21 said at the company’s first bankruptcy court hearing, Bloomberg News reported. The company owed suppliers $350 million when it filed bankruptcy, Joshua Sussberg told Bankruptcy Judge Mary Walrath yesterday. Before it filed for chapter 11 on Sunday, Forever 21 signed deals with 136 suppliers who were owed $244 million to keep sending the company clothing, Sussberg said. The case is Forever 21 Inc., 19-12122, District of Delaware (Delaware).