This Sunday is the series premiere of Food Court Wars on the Food Network. The show is executive produced by Gordon Ramsay and hosted by Tyler Florence. The premise of the show is that two teams compete against each other with the winner getting a space for their restaurant in a local mall rent-free for a year, which is valued up to $100,000.The series actually had a pilot episode filmed in Huntsville, Alabama, which aired on the Food Network in December 2012. I guess they decided the ratings were good enough to film additional episodes, which start this Sunday. The winning team of the pilot episode was Kettle n' Spouts, and they won a year rent-free in the Madison Square Mall.
Despite the episode being filmed in August, Kettle n' Spouts closed either in late February or early March. The restaurant also stopped updating their Twitter and Facebook pages on February 22nd, and gave no reason to why they closed. People were questioning what happened, but there have been no responses from the restaurant. Not sure why you would close a restaurant that was rent-free before the year lease ran out, but I can't find a reason why it was closed.
The mall locations set to appear on this season of Food Court Wars are: Meridian, MS, Spartanburg, SC, Midland, MI, Burnsville, MN, Wausau, WI, and Charleston, SC. I will keep an eye out to see if the winning restaurants face the same fate as Kettle n' Spouts or if they succeed. I wonder out of the six new ones, how many will renew the lease after a year (if they make it that long)?
UPDATE - The winner of the Meridian, Mississippi episode, Mary Jo's Hot Tamales, plans to open their restaurant in the mall in early August.