A Scottsville Road restaurant that has seen its business suffer dramatically since a hepatitis scare earlier this year closed its doors Wednesday. Hops Restaurant, Bar and Brewery has been sold by its parent company Avado Brands to Ruby Tuesday, according to Jim Maroney, a Realtor with Sims Realty, who is coordinating the sale. Terms of the purchase were not revealed. The Hops in Bowling Green is now closed, read a sign on the restaurants front doors Wednesday night. The sign thanked customers for their patronage and gave a corporate telephone number for those who had gift certificates they could no longer use. The restaurants management directed all questions to the companys corporate office. Several calls made to the companys corporate office in Tampa, Fla., were not returned. Sales at the restaurant, which opened in Bowling Green in 1994 and was known for its on-site microbrewery, dropped dramatically following the discovery that an employee had contracted the hepatitis A virus between Jan. 31 and Feb. 10. More than 1,500 people who had dined there received treatment from The Barren River District Health Department as a result. Hops had averaged between 2,200 and 2,400 diners a week before the hepatitis incident. Their business had dropped from around $40,000 a week to less than half that following the hepatitis outbreak, Maroney said. Hepatitis basically killed their business. Georgia-based Ruby Tuesday plans to demolish the Hops building Dec. 15 and begin constructing a new restaurant in the spring. Its one of the best chain restaurants in the nation, Maroney said. It ranks sixth or seventh in the nation. I would compare it with an OCharleys or Pargos and a step above TGI Fridays.Remodeling the Hops restaurant to fit Ruby Tuesdays layout would have cost nearly as much as the purchase price for the facility; rebuilding allows the restaurant to build a facility to fit its design while also getting additional tax breaks, he said. Ruby Tuesday has almost 600 company-owned and franchised restaurants, including eight Kentucky locations.