Up to 350 Wendy’s restaurants could shutter their doors by the end of the year, following hundreds of closures announced in 2024.
“Consistently underperforming” locations affecting the company will be first on the chopping block, in an effort “to boost sales and profitability at nearby locations,” interim CEO Ken Cook said Friday, according to CNN.
In November 2024, the company announced that it planned to close 140 of its underperforming restaurants to make way for new storefronts in higher-performing locations.
“The company plans to replace these sites with more profitable locations with average unit volumes of $2 million and more,” Wendy’s spokesperson Heidi Schauer confirmed to USA TODAY in 2024. “Around 250 to 300 new Wendy’s sites were expected to have opened in 2024.”
However, a year after the announcement, the opposite is happening. The fast food chain is planning to close hundreds more of its locations around the country.
Of the fast food chain’s 6,000 domestic restaurants, it’s unclear which particular locations are being scrapped.
“When we look at the system today, we have some restaurants that do not elevate the brand and are a drag from a franchise financial performance perspective… The goal is to address and fix those restaurants,” Cook said.
U.S. fast food chains have been struggling to attract lower-income consumers in the past few years as inflation has raised prices. Cook said he expects lower-income consumers to remain pressured for the rest of this year.
Closures are expected to begin before the end of the year.