![]() In a written statement sent to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Knight said she wants to distance herself from the restaurant business as its legal troubles move through court. “The Restaurants are in free fall and their decline necessarily has the collateral effect of damaging Knight’s Intellectual Property and Knight’s reputation,” the suit states. The suit, filed recently in Atlanta federal court, also asks that Gladys Knight’s Chicken and Waffles stop using the Empress of Soul’s recipes and memorabilia. Soul music legend Gladys Knight is asking a judge to remove her name and likeness from her son’s troubled chicken and waffle restaurants, saying their flagging fortunes are hurting her reputation. BOB (Photo by ANDRES / Willoughby Mariano, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution Gladys Knight is not involved in the investigation. Gladys Knight’s son, who runs the operation, is at the center of an investigation involving $1 million, according to Channel 2 Action News. Gladys Knight did not respond to requests for comment placed through a representative.J– Atlanta – The Georgia Department of Revenue has raided Gladys Knight’s Chicken and Waffles. Hankerson declined comment through Steve Sadow, one of his attorneys. “I think he was just in it for the money in the end,” said Charles Preston, 63, who worked as a manager at the downtown location for eight years until he quit in April. ![]() ![]() Funds were so scarce that managers rushed to cash employees’ bounced paychecks with money from the downtown restaurant’s safe before Hankerson’s representatives arrived to retrieve it, they said. On paper, the company was making $8 million in annual sales, but years of chaos at the Atlanta institution had pushed it to the brink of collapse. In one case, a general manager - one of Hankerson’s childhood friends - put some $12,000 on his credit card to keep the company’s employee health insurance coverage from lapsing, former employees said.īy the time Hankerson, 38, was booked into Clayton County Jail June 22 on felony theft charges, he had pocketed some $52,000 in state taxes during March and April alone, according to his arrest warrant. Managers dug into their own pockets just to keep the restaurant’s doors open for the day, public records and interviews with a dozen former employees and business associates confirmed. The spending exacted a heavy toll on employees who were shorted on their pay after working under grueling and sometimes unsafe conditions. Hankerson siphoned money from his business’s three locations to finance a voracious marijuana habit and sex parties, witnesses have told investigators. Now, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has learned damaging new details about how Hankerson spent the company’s money and treated his employees. All three locations have since reopened under state receivership. Gladys Knight’s Chicken and Waffles four Atlanta area restaurant locations have reopened but are now under state receivership.įans now wait in hour-long lines at its spot on Peachtree Street in downtown Atlanta for a taste of the Midnight Train: Four jumbo chicken wings on a golden waffle.īut the outward success of a famous family business unraveled when state revenue agents raided and closed the restaurant chain last month, arrested Hankerson on theft counts, and filed civil racketeering charges against him, alleging more than $1 million in unpaid taxes, interest and penalties. Knight may have believed he’d recovered from that childhood trauma, but years later, Hankerson is accused of running the restaurants that carry his mother’s name into financial ruin, the Atlanta Journal Constitution reports. Gladys Knight’s divorce from her ex-husband record manager Barry Hankerson devastated their son, Shanga, she said in her memoir.
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