Another Being Closed : VSR Reports Sale of a Piret’s in Mission Hills

Vicorp Specialty Restaurants has sold its popular Piret’s restaurant in Mission Hills to Jeanne Driscoll, the restaurant company’s San Diego-based director of marketing, the company said Friday.

The Piret’s restaurant at South Coast Plaza in Orange County will discontinue operations on March 14, according to VSR President Thomas W. Doan. South Coast Plaza has not determined whether to continue operating the restaurant under the Piret’s name or replace it with another restaurant, a mall spokesman said Friday.

The Mission Hills sale and the South Coast Plaza closing are part of a flurry of activity that has enveloped the chain, which once included seven restaurants.

Late last year, VSR closed its Grossmont Center restaurant and shuttered a commissary in Rose Canyon. Restaurant founders George and Piret Munger recently bought back the La Jolla and Encinitas Piret’s they sold to VSR less than three years ago. VSR last month reopened its downtown Piret’s location as a Boathouse Grill.

VSR gave no indication as to the fate of its remaining Piret’s restaurant, in Beverly Hills.

Friday’s announcement means that at least three companies will be using the Piret’s name owned by VSR through its Perfect Pan subsidiary.

The Mungers have been using the name at their La Jolla and Encinitas restaurants. Driscoll said she plans to keep the Piret’s name at the Mission Hills location, and VSR still calls the Beverly Hills restaurant Piret’s.

The sudden proliferation of independently owned Piret’s restaurants “hopefully will be a temporary phenomenon,” said Marshall Lewis, the Mungers’ attorney.

VSR, which operates 63 other restaurants, sold the Mission Hills location and plans to close the South Coast Plaza restaurant because the chain has appealed “to a relatively narrow market segment,” according to VSR President Thomas W. Doan.

VSR now will focus on its “faster-growing” beef and seafood restaurants, Doan said.

The company operates Carlos Murphy’s, Hungry Hunter, Mountain Jack’s, the Boathouse, the Dock and the Whaling Company restaurants.