Without Much Fanfare, uWink Closes Its Woodland Hills Location
Back in January, a Twitter follower brought to my attention the fact that uWink at the Topanga Promenade mall had closed. For those of you don’t know, uWink was a high concept restaurant where you could place orders via a video console at the table, play games, and even pay all without the help of a waiter or waitress. At least, that’s what I’ve read. I never made it to this place before it closed. I will say that I always heard the food was good.
The Woodland Hills uWink opened in 2006, the first of what would become a chain of two three restaurants, the other opening at Hollywood & Highland in 2008. [Editorial note: There was a third, also closed, restaurant in Mountain View, CA] It was both the vanity project and franchising scheme blueprint of Atari, and later Chuck E. Cheese, founder Nolan Bushnell. It became a publicly traded company (an Over-the-Counter Bulletin Board listed penny stock) but has since been voluntarily deregistered by the company.
The Hollywood & Highland unit is still open, but one can only guess as for how much longer. In the world of franchising and the stock market, you’re either expanding, or you’re done. It looks like they have strikes on their record in both of those domains.
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