Avidan Nightlife Group Files for Debt Freeze Amid 13.9 Million Shekel Deficit
The Avidan nightlife group, operating seven venues and employing 250 workers, has filed for a 45-day stay of proceedings over 13.9 million shekels in debt. The group seeks to restructure liabilities and protect its owners from personal guarantees.
The Avidan restaurant and nightlife group, owned by brothers Idan, Raz, and Mor Avidan, has filed an urgent application with the Tel Aviv District Court for a temporary 45-day stay of proceedings to formulate a debt settlement with its creditors. The group, which operates seven bars and restaurants in Tel Aviv and central cities and employs approximately 250 workers, has accumulated debts totaling about 13.9 million shekels. Simultaneously, the group is seeking to protect the three brothers from personal collection proceedings arising from guarantees they provided for the companies' debts.
The group's venues include the Concierge at Dizengoff Square in Tel Aviv, Symphony and YONO in Kiryat Ono, Reception and Signature in Givatayim, Harmony in Ness Ziona, and Melody at Drorim Mall. Founded by the three brothers who entered the nightlife scene back in 2007 with the opening of the Moledet club on Arlozorov Street in Tel Aviv, the group reported revenues of about 39.4 million shekels in 2024, reaching approximately 40 million shekels in 2025.
According to the application, filed through attorneys Bat-Chen Toledano and Ohad Harel, the liabilities include about 11.3 million shekels owed to creditors holding personal guarantees from the brothers, about 1.42 million shekels in preferential debts to employees and authorities, and roughly 1 million shekels in secured debts. These figures do not include October employee salaries totaling about 750,000 shekels, which remain unpaid, alongside potential additional debts that may surface later.
Failed Expansion and Accumulated Losses
The brothers attributed their financial strain to a series of crises over recent years, beginning with the COVID-19 pandemic, through the Iron Swords war and its blow to tourism, to successive rounds of fighting with Iran. They noted that venues relying on evening and nighttime leisure were hit particularly hard, as unlike other food businesses, they could not pivot to delivery services.
However, court filings show that a primary catalyst for the crisis was an unsuccessful business expansion. In August 2025, the group opened a chef restaurant on Rothschild Boulevard in Tel Aviv in partnership with Chef Tomer Agai, with an investment of about 1 million shekels. The restaurant struggled to recover from closures during the war in February 2026, and the chef subsequently departed. The venue eventually closed after generating cumulative losses estimated at roughly 2.5 million shekels, which the group financed using revenues from its other restaurants.
This was compounded by an investment deal signed in April 2025 with Blues Brothers, which invested 4.5 million shekels in exchange for a 15% stake in the participating companies. The agreement mandated regular profit distributions to the investor amounting to 90,000 shekels per month, a burden that severely strained cash flow before being mutually reduced to about 30,000 shekels per month.
The immediate trigger for the court filing occurred over the weekend, when Max IT Finance, acting as both a financial lender and a credit card processor for parts of the group, announced it would continue withholding over 600,000 shekels due to the companies. The group argued that this withholding prevents them from meeting payroll, rent, and supplier obligations, thereby threatening the survival of the restaurants.
Proposed Debt Settlement and Creditor Impact
Under the proposed debt arrangement, the group aims to keep all seven operating restaurants running and repay creditors about 4 million shekels over several years out of future profits. Preferential creditors, including employees and state authorities, would receive full repayment within three years. Conversely, creditors holding personal guarantees from the brothers would receive 20% of their debt up to a total cap of 2.5 million shekels, while unsecured ordinary creditors would receive a mere 10%. Secured creditors would be paid out in accordance with collateral values and statutory regulations.
The group emphasized that despite its overall financial distress, several venues remain profitable. For instance, the Symphony branch in Kiryat Ono generated a profit of about 1.27 million shekels in 2025, and court documents show the seven active companies collectively posted a combined profit of about 682,000 shekels that year.
"The companies are not in business collapse," the filing stated, arguing that the core difficulty is purely cash-flow related, stemming from debt structure and historical losses. The brothers asserted that a debt settlement will preserve operations and jobs for approximately 250 workers, whereas liquidation would harm both creditors and employees. The application is currently pending court approval, with the group requesting the appointment of a settlement manager to oversee operations and negotiate the framework.
