Employees in the dark as local Subway franchises shutter and franchisee stays silent – KRCR-TV
REDDING, Calif. — After Subway staff at locations around Shasta County were locked out on Jan. 26, employees are still figuring out what comes next. Meanwhile, Delight Foods Incorporated, who franchises the recently closed Subways, has maintained their silence.
“I would never have seen that coming, or expected anything like that to happen,” shared Annaleigh Richie. “It was like, definitely blindsiding.”
Richie, the now former manager of the Subway on Hilltop Drive and Industrial Street in Redding, was cleaning out her office Monday. While the initial closing surprised her, looking back, she says there were signs of trouble.
“For the past couple of weeks, they’ve been slowly closing down stores, but they always had some sort of excuse for why that one was closing,” she says. “Like [when] Dana Drive closed and they said it was a bad location, and their lease was up, and they were going to relocate.”
She says, the day before all other Subways closed nearby, the one on Eureka Way in Redding was closed indefinitely due to an ongoing water leak, according to leadership at the time.
It’s not just low-level employees that are out of the loop. The next day, when nearby locations closed, Richie says an inspector from Subway’s national corporate office was visiting.
“She ended up going to another store after mine and they were closed, so she messaged me. She’s like, ‘Did you guys close at 2 today also?’ And I was like, ‘Yeah, I was instructed to close. I’m note sure why.’ So I know she doesn’t have any idea what’s going on.”
“I don’t know if corporate knows at all,” Richie says.
The Northstate’s News reached out to the national Subway corporate office on Friday when this all started, and again on Monday. There has been no response so far.
However, as we dug into Delight Foods Incorporated, based in Redding, we found they’ve been embroiled in a class action lawsuit for Wage Theft since 2018.
An attorney on the case shared they had just reached a settlement at the end of last year, but says they’d delayed finalizing it at Delight Food’s Request. Now, he believes they’ll likely have to go through even lengthier court battles before any of their clients receive money from Delight Foods or CEO and President Steven Ahrens. Richie says it might be the same for her.
“I had started paying some of my bills so when my check bounced my account actually went negative, so I was freaking out about that. I was like well, I was already issued this check. I worked for it. I have bills to pay.”
Richie says while signs on these locations doors say the stores will return, she doubts any current subway employee will come with.
“None of us have heard anything about that, and they just put signs up without telling anybody and we just had to just kind of see them for our selves,” she says. “So I don’t know if they’re really planning on re-opening and expecting everyone to come back but I don’t think anybody is really going to.”
We reached out to Delight Foods and went to their office to try to get into contact, however no one was there, and no one has responded.
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