I’m thinking NBC goofed on the name of their restaurant show. They should have named it America’s Next Spectacular Failure.

And boy, what a spectacular failure it was.

Less than two months after Jamawn Woods won America’s Next Great Restaurant, the third and final Soul Daddy location, the one in the Mall of America in Minneapolis, closed its doors. At least that location made it 58 days before being shuttered. The Los Angeles and New York locations closed June 14, just 44 days after opening for business.

You know that’s gotta hurt.

Debuting March 6, 2011, NBC’s America’s Next Great Restaurant was hosted and judged by four chef/restaurateurs: Bobby Flay, Curtis Stone, Lorena Garcia, and Steve Ells. The premise of the show was, like the name said, to find the next great restaurant concept. The twist being that the four judges would be investors in that restaurant.

To do that, contestants from around the country tried out for the show by pitching their restaurant concepts. The first episode saw the Top 20 being cut to the Top 10. The contestants then competed in a series of challenges that were designed to prove to the judges that the contestants had a handle on their concept.

In addition, the contestants would also cook one or more entrees from their menu to be eaten by customers. The customers would drop coins into the boxes of the concept they liked best. The contestants with the lowest number of coins would face the judges, with one being eliminated each week.

In the May 1 finale, Jamawn Woods and his Soul Daddy concept went up against Sudhir Kandula (Spice Coast) and Joey Galluzzi (Brooklyn Meatball Company). On May 2, the first three restaurants in what the judges hoped would eventually become a major chain, opened.

The question now is, what in the world happened? Why did the chain close less than two months after opening?

The answers, unfortunately, are simply not forthcoming at this time. ANGR Holdings, the company created to own and manage the Soul Daddy restaurants, simply released the following statement after the final closing.

“After careful consideration and a thorough review of its performance, we have decided to close Soul Daddy at the Mall of America. This was a difficult decision for us, as we wanted to see Soul Daddy succeed, but the restaurant simply was not performing as we had hoped. We’d like to thank all of the customers who tried our restaurants and the people who worked hard to try to make the restaurants succeed.

–Soul Daddy Restaurants”

It doesn’t really surprise me that ANGR Holdings isn’t providing more answers, since I think the fault lies with them. And their shortcomings means that Jamawn is out of a restaurant.

DJ Slim and I talked about this a great deal on the Idol Radio Show last night.

Slim felt the investors expected lines around the restaurants each day for months, an expectation that may not of even happened on the first day.If investors really did expect long lines, I can’t figure out what they were basing it on. If Curtis Stone, Bobby Flay, and other celebrity chefs were going to be working at the locations, then I would agree that long lines would be expected. But to expect people to line up on day one simply because of a TV series simply shows just how out of touch with reality the people of this reality show were.

I felt that opening three locations on the same day, even with all the “advertising” they got from the TV show, was a mistake that probably added too much to the operating costs. Even with Chipotle Mexican Grill providing management and operations support, you just don’t launch a new restaurant concept that way. Why not start with one location in a destination location that people visit? That would allow Jamawn the time he needed to learn what he needed to learn. And it also would have allowed for easier and quicker gathering of feedback about what was and was not working.

But in looking around the Internet today, it appears that the problems were much deeper than too high expectations and a three-state simultaneous launch.

First, it appears that the three locations were hastily put together. Commenters on various blogs around the web are saying that the decor was bland and boring. One commenter said the location he visited looked like what he imagined prison would look like. With atmosphere so important for a restaurant, why wouldn’t ANGR Holdings take the time to give the locations some personality? Despite the promise of deep-pocketed financial support, were they simply too afraid to spend any money to give the restaurants some life?

Second, it appears that the food was just as bland as the decor. And again, that’s ANGR Holdings fault. The recipes were there. After all, the judges ate his food ever week and liked what he did most of the time. He wouldn’t have made the Top 3, much less win, if his recipes were bad. That means the problem at the restaurants lies with the cooks that were hired. Either they found a batch of cooks that don’t know how to cook soul food, or weren’t paying the cooks enough to care about doing a good job.

Finally, I think the cancellation of American’s Next Great Restaurant played a part in this as well. If there had been a Season 2, the investors would have been forced to stick it out for at least a year. But with no new season coming, and thus no negative press to overcome for a second season, the investors had an out. And, apparently, decided to take it instead of really trying to make a go of the restaurant.

Sadly, Jamawn is the one that gets hosed in this fiasco. His dream of owning a restaurant may be gone forever now. ANGR Holdings holds the registered trademark on the Soul Daddy name, as well as the trademarks for the names of the other concepts that were in the competition. DJ Slim wonders if the company will now try to open their own version of Soul Daddy, without any involvement from Jamawn.

And if you think that’s bad, listen to this: When the first restaurant closed for business, Jamawn knew nothing about it. He found out afterwards via e-mail, just hours after he put an offer for a home in Lakeville, Minnesota, an offer he made because of a commitment that required the winner to move near one of the locations.

The news of the Mall of America location closing reportedly comes after Jamawn had closed on the house. And it also appears to have been unexpected. The manager of the location said they had just recently received permission to make some changes to the menu and were in the process of adding more soul food items to the menu.

Now if that doesn’t leave a sour taste in your mouth, I don’t know what will.

So what do you think? Leave your thoughts about Soul Daddy and the investors in the comments below.