Bloomin’ Brands confirmed to the Tampa Bay Business Journal that it laid off 55 employees on Wednesday. The casual dining parent, which operates Outback Steakhouse, Bonefish Grill, Fleming’s Prime Steakhouse, and Carrabba’s Italian Grill, told the publication the layoffs affected different levels of the company, and that Bloomin’ planned to support the employees in their transition with severance packages.
Outback was Bloomin’s lone concept to report positive same-store sales this past quarter. The steakhouse chain was up 0.6 percent, year-over-year. Carrabba’s fell 2.8 percent; Bonefish was down 4.3 percent; and Fleming’s declined 1 percent. Traffic at Outback grew 0.1 percent.
“We reduced the layers in our organization to speed up innovation and reduce bureaucracy. The pace of change in consumer dining trends has accelerated, requiring us to be even faster and more agile to stay ahead,” a Bloomin’ spokeswoman told the Tampa Bay Business Journal.
The Journal reports that Bloomin’ is the fifth largest publicly traded company in Tampa Bay, with more than $4 billion in revenue in 2016. Bloomin’ also employs more than 97,000 employees worldwide (950 at the corporate level).
