Farewell Redbox: Kiosk-rental business to shut down after 22 years

Say farewell to those red kiosks in front of your local supermarket and other stores – Redbox, the video-rental and streaming company, is shutting down.

Redbox’s owners, Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy earlier this month. Now, according to reports from NBC News and Variety, Chicken Soup has converted the case to a Chapter 7 liquidation proceeding.

What that means is that the company couldn’t figure out a plan to pay off its outstanding debts and will need to sell off its assets in order to pay creditors.

As a result, the company will lay off about 1,000 employees and shut down Redbox’s network of roughly 24,000 DVD rental kiosks found in retailers across the U.S.

“Based on allegations we’ve heard, it’s important that a Chapter 7 trustee be appointed and undertake an appropriate investigation of the company,” Judge Thomas Horan said, according to the Wall Street Journal. “1,000 people are about to lose their jobs and they’re not even going to be paid for work that they did.”

“Sentiment’s in the gutter,” an anonymous Redbox employee said to NBC. “We have coworkers who’ve missed rent, facing eviction.”