Exit Zero Publishing appeared to have a successful, growing business, evolving from a weekly publication in Cape May, a resort town on the New Jersey coast, into a retail operation.
And then it opened some restaurants, which ultimately landed the company into bankruptcy. The story is one of poor timing. But it also shows the sheer difficulty of operating restaurants right now, even those that are seemingly successful.
The story of Exit Zero begins in 2003, when Jack Wright, a longtime journalist who worked in London and New York, started a weekly magazine in Cape May called Exit Zero, so called because of its placement at the end of the Garden State Parkway. That is according to the company’s website.
The publication is mostly black-and-white and features articles, briefs on the area’s history, photos from local events and a lot of information about local restaurants and bars. Over time the company published a guide book and expanded into retail operations.
In 2015, it founded a restaurant, called Exit Zero Cookhouse. Three years later it turned an old gas station into a restaurant and called it Exit Zero Filling Station. Both restaurants were given strong early reviews. It generated national attention for the trailers it used to maintain social distancing during the pandemic.
The company opened three more restaurants, according to court documents, but the pandemic would prove problematic, according to court filings.
The restaurant business struggled during and immediately after the pandemic, first from government-mandated closures and then from soaring inflation on both food and labor immediately after the end of quarantine.
The company in 2024 closed its three new restaurants. “Despite substantial efforts to maintain the restaurant operations, the three additional restaurant locations were ultimately unsuccessful and closed in February 2024,” Wright said in a court filing.
Exit Zero Filling Station closed last September.
The publishing company and its owners pumped a lot of resources into the restaurants to make them work, which spread the pain to the entire business, straining liquidity, according to court documents. They fell behind on their bills and earlier this month filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
Wright did not respond to a message seeking comment.
But the pandemic and its aftermath have been tough on restaurant operators. That difficulty has led to the closure of numerous restaurants, including many with busy dining rooms and stellar reputations. And Exit Zero is hardly the only company to be attracted to the allure of running a cool restaurant, only to realize that it’s not all that easy.
“The financial consequences arising from the unsuccessful restaurant operations, together with the debt incurred by the debtor while supporting those operations, ultimately necessitated the filing of this Chapter 11 case,” Wright said in his court filing.
Exit Zero’s bankruptcy plan, for what it’s worth, is to reorganize the business and get back to what it was all about originally, publishing, selling advertising and running a limited online retail operation.