The year 2024 has been unkind to many restaurant brands, as especially evidenced by the staggering number of bankruptcies filed this year. Indeed, restaurants are on track to declare the most bankruptcies in decades with the exception of 2020, when the pandemic upended the industry. No segment has been spared, with Chapter 11 filings from legacy chains like Red Lobster and TGI Fridays to once-quickly-growing startups like Hawkers Asian Street Food and Melt Bar & Grilled, to franchisees of major brands like Pizza Hut and Applebee’s.
Several factors have created this challenging environment. Many concepts took on too much debt to navigate the pandemic, for instance, and that debt became significantly more expensive with the rise in interest rates. Simultaneously, input costs skyrocketed across the board while consumers pulled back on their restaurant spending, eroding topline sales and traffic. Here is a look at some of the biggest bankruptcies from 2024.
