Last week I drove by the Applebee's on E State in Rockford and I noticed that their parking lot hadn't been cleared since the most recent snow storm, and I thought, that's weird. I hadn't heard this location had closed, so I was instantly curious to find out what's up.

Like any normal human does in a social media age, I immediately hopped on Facebook to find answers. I found that the Facebook for Applebee's on E State St. lists "temporarily closed" as their hours, but that is all the info I could find.

So, just how "temporarily" are we talking here? Wrex.com wasn't able to find out much more either..

13 WREX has reached out to the restaurant for more information, including when the restaurant plans to reopen their doors, but we haven't heard back at this time.

Applebee's website currently only lists one location for Rockford, which is the location on East Riverside Blvd.

Uh oh. I hate to be Debbie Downer here, but when a location has been removed from a website, and the actual restaurant already looks abandoned, I can't help but feel more  bad news is on the horizon.

I guess only time will tell, but I will say this; if we want to avoid hearing more sad tales like this coming from locally-owned businesses, we need to continue our mission to support them. We should probably even amp up of our efforts to do so. They really  need us right now.

Catch Lil Zim on ‘Q98.5 Mornings with Lil Zim & JB’ on Q98.5 from 6:00 a.m. to 10 a.m. Follow her on TwitterInstagram, and  Facebook

 

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