Retail Closures Week of August 22–28, 2026: 904 Events, a Restaurant Franchise Wave, and a First Hospitality Alert

Store Closure Watch logged 904 closure and distress events for the week of August 22–28, 2026 — 761 closures, 96 bankruptcies, 35 layoffs, and 8 restructurings, down 36.6% from last week's expansion-driven 1,425. Restaurant chains had the week: Buca di Beppo's Chapter 11 put 18 locations in the file across 14 states, alongside Red Lobster, Papa Murphy's, and Long John Silver's closures, while Tyson Foods closed four plants with 3,223 jobs across two WARN notices. Our early-warning system flagged hospitality and entertainment at more than double its trailing average — the second sector alert in two weeks.

A Normal Week Again, and a First Alert for Hospitality

This week's file holds 904 closure and distress events across 51 states and territories, down 36.6% from last week's 1,425. The drop is expected: last week was the largest file we've published because a new enrichment method landed months of company lists and filings at once. This week is the new normal running at its regular pace — 127 records carry WARN filings, 96 are bankruptcy events, and the week's records span every sector we track.

The Big Story

Restaurant chains had the week. Buca di Beppo's Chapter 11 put 18 locations into the file across 14 states, from Chandler, Arizona to Wyomissing, Pennsylvania — a single filing turning into an address-level closure list. Around it: nine more Red Lobster closures in Alabama, California and Illinois (the Peru, Illinois restaurant closes September 6), eleven Papa Murphy's records as the chain's Tennessee pullback continues, seven Long John Silver's records from the chain's own franchise disclosure showing 30 closures across 18 states, and six Bahama Breeze closures as Darden winds the brand down.

The jobs story is Tyson Foods: four plant closures this week in Iowa, Illinois, Nebraska and Utah. The two WARN notices cover 3,223 jobs — Joslin, Illinois at 2,500 and Eagle Mountain, Utah at 723. Lexington, Nebraska's roughly 3,200 comes from a company announcement rather than a notice, so we don't add it to the WARN total.

The third thread is quieter and it tripped our first hospitality alert: 17 news-reported hospitality and entertainment closures against a trailing average of about 8 — more than double, and the second week running a sector has flagged (grocery flagged in mid-August). The mix is what makes it interesting: four movie theaters (AMC in Londonderry, Apple Cinemas in Hartford, both O'Neil Cinemas locations in New Hampshire, Movies 16 in Janesville), two stage theaters (Georgia Ensemble, Jungle Theater in Minneapolis), a bowling center on Staten Island, and a fitness cluster led by Mad Fitness Group, the F45 franchisee whose bankruptcy closed studios in Germantown, Olney and White Marsh, Maryland. Discretionary-entertainment closures spreading across formats in one week is the kind of pattern the flag exists to catch early; we'll report whether it holds.

Sector Breakdown

• Retail — 270 events. Macy's closure program lands as 21 records across 20 states as the full list resolves to locations; Starbucks appears 19 times across 10 states; GameStop and Walmart at 6 each; and the independent layer runs from Buckeye Salvage in Canton to Rock Cave IGA in West Virginia.
• Restaurant & Food Service — 250 events. The franchise wave above, plus City Watch Coffee's two Pennsylvania closures and a steady independent count.
• Healthcare — 108 events. The 93 Florida licence-record candidates, plus HCA Florida Capital Hospital closing its NICU and KidsPeace's Bowdon residential program.
• Office & Services — 78 events. T-Mobile's Washington retail and office consolidation under two WARN notices, and Bimbo Bakeries' headquarters move.
• Industrial & Manufacturing — 71 events. Stone Brewing exiting Escondido (220 jobs, WARN-filed), Bumble Bee Foods' Santa Fe Springs plant (233 jobs, WARN-filed), Foremost Farms in Marshfield, Wisconsin (68 jobs), and the Eagle Horizon Mine in West Virginia (71 jobs).
• Grocery & Convenience — 31 events. Kroger's roughly 60-store program continues to resolve to locations; O'Brien's Market and Fresh Value on the independent side. After flagging last week, grocery is back near its average.

Notable Individual Events

• Family Dollar — restructuring, 5,000 jobs. The week's largest workforce figure, tied to the chain's store-network restructuring.
• Tyson Foods — Joslin, Illinois. Plant closure, 2,500 jobs, WARN-filed; the state is in talks about repurposing the site.
• Stone Brewing — Escondido, California. The craft-beer pioneer exits its home production site, 220 jobs, WARN-filed.
• Bumble Bee Foods — Santa Fe Springs, California. Plant closure, 233 jobs, WARN-filed.
• Flagstone Foods — Dothan, Alabama. Layoffs of 98, WARN-filed.
• Hampshire College — Amherst, Massachusetts. Confirmed December closure; college closures continue to track alongside the retail data.

Data Update

This file introduces a Closure Candidate status. Ninety-three records, all Florida health-care facilities, come from state licence records that show a facility closed before any news source has confirmed it. They are labelled exactly that way in the file — a step before a confirmed closure, not a guess — and they are why Florida leads the state table at 169 records. Job figures that come from one multi-site WARN notice are now also labelled in the file, so a notice total is never mistaken for per-store counts.

Methodology

Store Closure Watch records are automatically extracted from company announcements, WARN notices, court dockets, state licence records, federal filings, and news coverage, then audited with an independent verification pass and cross-referenced against state WARN filings before publication. 127 of this week's records carry WARN filings and 96 are bankruptcy events. Counts are closure and distress events, not unique stores — a chain program can span many records. Public roundups report chain names and city or metro areas only; street addresses, coordinates, and per-record source links are available to subscribers. Learn more about how the data pipeline works.

Figures reflect the dataset as of August 30, 2026, following weekly deduplication, an independent audit pass, and quality review.