BANGOR – Papa Gino’s has officially ended current efforts to sustain businesses in central and northern Maine with the closing of its two Bangor restaurants.

The Italian restaurant chain, based in Dedham, Mass., closed the restaurants on Union Street and Bangor Mall Boulevard on Saturday, citing an inability to reach financial objectives.

“Bangor was a new market for us and we gave a certain time period to reach certain goals, to be successful in the eyes of the company,” said Bill Chiccarelli, a spokesperson for Papa Gino’s Inc.

“We generally try to locate in areas of concentrated population. In northern Maine the population is spread out so we picked areas of high traffic.”

After two years located next to Bangor International Airport and the Bangor Mall, the company felt “they simply weren’t hitting the numbers and projections didn’t look like things would change,” Chiccarelli said.

Eighteen people were employed at the Bangor locations. Several of those employees have been relocated to southern Maine Papa Gino’s stores, while others received unspecified severance packages.

Papa Gino’s would not comment on whether the company had lost money on the two restaurants.

The closures do not reflect on the company’s financial standing, Chiccarelli said. There are now 180 Papa Gino’s locations in New England, and the company plans to open 180 more in the next five years, including expansion into New York.

While a second effort to sustain a Papa Gino’s Inc. business in central and northern Maine has not been ruled out, there are no plans to do so at this time, said the spokesman.

“We have been very successful in southern Maine where there is a higher concentration of people,” said Chiccarelli. “There really isn’t anything different in any of our restaurants. It’s the areas that they are located in.”

Six months ago Papa Gino’s shut down its only other location north of Auburn when its Ellsworth branch was closed because of inconsistent production as a result of the seasonal customers there, Chiccarelli said.

There are two remaining Papa Gino’s in Maine – in Auburn and Brunswick. Papa Gino’s Inc. also owns D’Angelo sandwich shops, with five locations in Maine, including Auburn, Lewiston and Portland.

Customers who purchased gift certificates for either of the Bangor restaurants may contact Papa Gino’s Inc. for refunds, the spokesman said.

“It doesn’t make good business sense to keep something open when it doesn’t look like it is going to succeed,” Chiccarelli said. “It came as a surprise to us that neither location met their goals.”