J Willy’s from Kitchen Nightmares season two closed down shortly after the episode first aired and the owners have reportedly moved on to other industries.
While it is pretty standard to see Chef Gordon Ramsay come up against various types of stubborn and ignorant owners on Kitchen Nightmares, none of the restaurant owners which have been featured on the show thus far have been quite as uninvolved and uninterested as J Willy’s owners.
Rick and Tricia had originally purchased J Willy’s (which used be a Damon’s Grill) as their second restaurant.
But since the couple lived more than three hours away from the middle-class town of South Bend in Indiana, they brought their friend John on board to help manage the place in their absence.
What happened to the owners after the Kitchen Nightmares episode
Unfortunately, Ramsay’s intervention and the commercialization of the restaurant’s signature BBQ sauce was a little too last-minute.
J Willy’s shut its doors on February 4, 2009, just three months after the Kitchen Nightmares episode aired (and about a year after the episode was filmed).
Rick, Tricia and John have all kept off of social media after their brief appearance on this reality television show, which does make it difficult to keep up with their whereabouts all these years later.
But Reality TV Updates has stated that Rick and Tricia have now also sold their other restaurant, and that Rick now has a job in the automotive sales industry, restoring and selling classic cars.
Season 2 of Kitchen Nightmares does not have the best track record
The news of J Willy’s closing so soon after the Kitchen Nightmares episode aired certainly shocked many longtime viewers of the show.
But in reality, this is not the only restaurant from the second season of the show that Ramsay could not rescue.
The statuses of the other restaurants featured in this season can be summarized below:
| Restaurant | Status |
| Handlebar | Closed in 2009 |
| Giuseppi’s | Closed in 2009 |
| Trobiano’s | Closed in 2008 |
| Black Pearl | Closed in 2008 |
| Hannah & Mason’s | Closed in 2010 |
| Jack’s Waterfront | Closed in 2010 |
| Sabatiello’s | Closed in 2008 |
| Fiesta Sunrise | Closed in 2008 |
| Santé La Brea | Closed in 2011 |
| Cafe 36 | Closed in 2009 |
Why did J Willy’s close down?
John spoke to The Herald Scotland in March of 2009 and although this ex-J Willy’s manager had nothing bad to say about Ramsay and the show, he did explain that the restaurant closed down because he could no longer keep up with rising “food prices and customer counts” at the business without “cutting corners”.
An insider from Leader Publications (who used to work at the restaurant before John, Rick and Tricia took over, when it was still Damon’s Grill) confirmed that business had been slowly declining at the space for years on end, even before J Willy’s debt had started increasing and before its Kitchen Nightmares’ makeover.
J Willy’s was most likely simply too far gone by the time that Ramsay arrived.
Thus, John, Rick and Tricia just could not continue to bankroll for long enough to see whether Ramsay’s changes would truly save it.
What happened to all of the J Willy’s staff?
Even though J Willy’s had already shut its doors by the time John spoke to The Herald Scotland, he did mention that Gordon Ramsay’s intervention had “a profound effect” on management style.
Though it does remain doubtful that John had much time to practice his new management style in the few months between Ramsay’s visit and the restaurant’s eventual closure, which left both John and the 40 members of J Willy’s staff unemployed.
There have been no further updates on what happened to the cook, Steve, or any of the other staff members, after the restaurant’s closure.
What happened to John?
While Rick and Tricia were technically J Willy’s first owners, fans who tuned in to watch this episode of Kitchen Nightmares will know that their friend and partner, John William Ittenbach (after whom the restaurant was eventually named), was really the only co-owner who was involved in the day-to-day operations of the eatery.
The Caterer reported that John notified the estate agent in charge of selling J Willy’s former home to take it off the market initially because he wanted to find an investor who wanted to embark on “the chance of a lifetime” to buy the restaurant and rights to J Willy’s award-winning commercially bottled BBQ sauce, instead of just selling the building.
However, since the building’s final sale went through just a few months later, it appears as if this plan did not pan out. Not much is known about what happened to John after this.
