Hard Rock Cafe at Newcastle Quayside suddenly closes
The restaurant at Newcastle’s Guildhall, which first opened in 2021, unexpectedly closed its doors earlier this week leaving customers puzzled.
It is also understood that staff at the franchise cafe, that has restaurants across the globe and is known for its merchandise and musical setting have been made redundant.
Inside Newcastle’s Hard Rock Cafe. Now, it has emerged that administrators from FRP Advisory were brought in on March 17 and the restaurant has closed with immediate effect.
A spokesperson for FRP Advisory said: “Antonya Allison and Steven Philip Ross, of FRP Advisory, were appointed Joint Administrators of The Hardrock Café franchise at Quayside in Newcastle on 17th March 2025.
“Despite efforts to find a positive way forward for the Company, it has unfortunately had to cease trading.
“FRP is supporting employees with applications to the redundancy payments service and marketing the business’s assets for sale.”
Hard Rock Cafe still has locations in London, Manchester and Edinburgh.
This closure comes four years after Washington-couple David and Penny Tilly opened the venue.
Owners David and Penny Tilly pictured in 2021. Explaining how the idea came to fruition in an interview with The Northern Echo in May 2021, franchisee Mr Tilly said he “couldn’t understand” why no-one else had brought the name to the city in previous years.
He said: “We’re huge fans of Hard Rock, wherever Penny and I went on holiday we’d always end up in a hard rock café with a fantastic burger.
Inside Newcastle’s Hard Rock Cafe.
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“You just know what you’re gonna get with Hard Rock – fantastic service, great live music – then when the grandchildren came along we started collecting, little bears for the grandchildren with all the locations on.
“We’d been on holiday and we we’re sat in Newcastle one afternoon and we said ‘wouldn’t it be great if there was a hard rock cafe’ in Newcastle, I could just do with a burger now.
“Years later, we were in Malaysia Hard Rock Cafe and just said how we would love to bring it to Newcastle, we couldn’t understand why nobody had done it before hand and then it went from there.”