15% of U.S. Restaurants Face Closure Risk in 2026, BBI Data Shows

The restaurant industry is closing out a brutal period and heading into one that may be worse. Black Box Intelligence data shows 15% of U.S. restaurants face material closure risk in 2026, a significant escalation from the firm's earlier estimate of 9% closure risk applied specifically to full-service operators. That prior figure, alarming on its own, has now expanded to cover the industry broadly, pulling in quick service, fast casual, and casual dining alike.

The numbers behind this projection are not speculative. They reflect operating conditions that are already baked into the 2026 landscape: persistent cost inflation, weakening consumer traffic, and a franchise system under strain at multiple points simultaneously.

The Profitability Crisis Is Real and Widespread

Start with the fundamentals. The National Restaurant Association projects industry sales will reach $1.55 trillion in 2026, a 4.8% increase over 2025. That headline sounds healthy until you strip out price increases. Real growth, adjusted for inflation, sits around 1%. The industry is not growing; it is repricing itself upward while traffic stagnates or declines.

Behind that headline, the profitability data tells a starker story. Forty-two percent of operators say their businesses were not profitable in 2025. Sixty percent say business conditions deteriorated over the prior year. These are not marginal operators running poorly located units. They represent a broad cross-section of the industry, including franchisees of major chains with established systems and marketing budgets behind them.

Average food costs remain more than 35% above pre-pandemic levels. That gap has not closed and is not expected to close in any meaningful way this year. Labor costs have risen in parallel, driven by a combination of wage legislation, tight labor markets, and the operational cost of higher turnover in an industry that was already struggling with retention before 2020.

What 15% Actually Means

Fifteen percent of U.S. restaurants is a large number when applied to an industry with roughly 1 million locations. Even accounting for the definitional complexity of that estimate, the practical implication is that somewhere between 100,000 and 150,000 restaurants are operating without sufficient margin to sustain themselves through another year of cost pressure or traffic softness.

The prior BBI figure of 9% was focused on full-service restaurants, where check averages are higher but so are labor costs, and where the value proposition relative to QSR narrows during inflationary periods. The expansion of that risk estimate to 15% across the full industry reflects two developments: conditions in full-service have not improved, and the pressure has spread into segments that once looked more resilient.

The franchise system is showing particular strain. The International Franchise Association projects QSR franchising will grow at just 0.5% in 2026, the slowest rate in recent memory. That figure reflects franchisee distress. When franchisees can't generate sufficient unit economics to justify new investment, the system doesn't grow. When they can't sustain existing units, closures follow.

Chain Closures Confirm the Trend

The 15% figure is not abstract. It shows up in specific decisions major chains are making right now. Wendy's is closing approximately 350 locations. Papa John's announced the closure of around 300 units as part of its turnaround strategy. Pizza Hut is shuttering 250 locations. Noodles & Company, once positioned as a growth vehicle in the fast casual segment, is closing more than 20% of its remaining footprint, dropping below 400 units. Sweetgreen, despite strong brand equity and loyal customers in urban cores, is pulling back on expansion and closing underperforming locations.

These are not failing brands in most cases. They are brands making rational decisions about which units can generate acceptable returns in the current cost environment. The units being closed are the ones that can't. The problem is that the cost environment has made a meaningful share of any chain's portfolio into candidates for that list.

The Tariff Variable

Sixty-eight percent of operators say tariffs drove higher costs in 2025, according to NRA data. This is an underappreciated factor in the closure risk calculus. Supply chain disruptions tied to trade policy created cost spikes on specific categories, protein in particular, that hit at precisely the wrong moment for operators already running thin margins.

The tariff situation remains fluid. Executive orders in early 2026 have provided some relief on specific categories, but the underlying uncertainty has not resolved. Operators who built their cost structures around pre-tariff commodity prices are operating with a structural disadvantage until those costs normalize, and there is no clear timeline for that.

The Consumer Side

Traffic is the other half of the equation, and it is not cooperating. Restaurant and foodservice sales are growing on a dollar basis, but the growth is price-driven. When you're selling the same number of transactions or fewer, but charging more per transaction, revenue growth is a mirage. The customers who remain are paying more. The customers who have exited are not coming back until the value proposition improves.

Consumer spending data points to a bifurcated picture. Higher-income consumers are still eating out at roughly pre-pandemic rates. Lower- and middle-income consumers, the core QSR demographic, have pulled back materially, shifting spending toward grocery and home cooking as the gap between restaurant prices and grocery prices has widened significantly. The USDA tracks the food-away-from-home versus food-at-home price index, and by mid-2025, restaurant prices had outpaced grocery prices by roughly 25 percentage points on a cumulative basis since 2020.

This dynamic is showing up in traffic counts at quick service chains, where value-oriented consumers are the primary customer. Brands that don't have a credible value message are losing those visits. The ones that do, like McDonald's with its McValue platform and Taco Bell with aggressive LTO pricing, are seeing relative outperformance.

A Market of Extremes

Black Box Intelligence describes the current landscape as "a market of extremes." That framing is accurate and consequential for operators trying to understand where they sit in the competitive structure.

On one side: chains with strong digital ecosystems, loyal programs with scale, and unit economics strong enough to absorb cost pressure without dramatic margin compression. McDonald's loyalty program has crossed 175 million global members. Chili's has executed one of the more surprising turnarounds in casual dining, posting double-digit comparable sales growth by leaning into value and simplifying its menu. Cava reported a billion-dollar revenue milestone and continues opening new units at a pace that signals investor confidence in the model.

On the other side: chains with aging unit portfolios, weak digital penetration, fragmented franchisee bases, and no differentiated value story. These are the operators and brands most directly exposed to the 15% closure risk estimate.

The gap between the two groups is widening. Winners are pulling customers from losers. The losers aren't recovering.

What the Data Actually Supports for Survival

Operators and investors looking at the BBI data for actionable guidance should focus on the structural factors that separate the closing 15% from the surviving 85%.

Unit economics discipline over footprint growth. The chains closing units right now are largely doing so to improve the economics of their surviving locations. Shrinking to grow is not a failure of strategy; it is the correct response to a cost environment that punishes weak units. Operators who hold onto underperforming locations because of sunken investment or franchisee pressure will face a harder reckoning later.

Value positioning that doesn't destroy margin. The consumer traffic data is clear: traffic follows value. But value doesn't mean lowest price. It means perceived value relative to price paid. McDonald's Big Mac combo isn't the cheapest option in the market, but the brand's investment in quality improvements, paired with digital offers that make customers feel they're getting deals, has stabilized traffic. The brands failing on value are those with neither a price story nor a quality story.

Digital and loyalty infrastructure. The 15% closure risk cohort skews heavily toward operators without loyalty programs or with programs that have not achieved meaningful enrollment. Digital ordering and loyalty data provide operators with tools to drive frequency, protect margin through targeted offers, and understand their customer base in ways that support better operational decisions. Operators without those tools are flying blind.

Cost structure right-sizing. With food costs 35% above pre-pandemic levels and no near-term relief in sight, operators who have not already restructured their menus around current cost realities are leaving margin on the table. Menu simplification, portion engineering, and category rationalization are not optional in this environment. The chains that have done this work are outperforming the ones that haven't.

The Investor Lens

For investors, the 15% closure risk figure creates both a warning and an opportunity. On the warning side: franchisee-heavy systems with weak unit economics and heavy debt loads are materially higher risk than their current valuations may reflect. Fat Brands, which filed for Chapter 11 in early 2026, is the clearest example of what happens when an acquisition-fueled growth strategy runs into a cost and traffic environment like this one.

On the opportunity side: the consolidation that comes with a contraction cycle creates acquisition opportunities for well-capitalized buyers. Private equity has been active. Sun Holdings, the Texas-based operator that has grown to one of the country's largest multi-brand franchisee groups, is a model for what disciplined consolidation looks like. Jersey Mike's, backed by Blackstone at an $8 billion valuation, is betting on the opposite end of the spectrum: a brand with strong unit economics and franchise appeal at a moment when franchisees are choosing where to allocate scarce capital.

The restaurant industry has always cycled. Contraction clears out the weakest operators and leaves room for the strongest to gain share. The 15% closure risk BBI is projecting for 2026 is not a collapse of the industry. It is an accelerated version of that cycle, driven by a cost environment that has been punishing for three years running and a consumer that has run out of patience for poor value.

The operators who survive this round will be leaner, more data-driven, and better positioned than the competition they left behind. The ones who don't are already visible in the data.

Sources: Black Box Intelligence industry analysis; National Restaurant Association 2026 State of the Restaurant Industry report; International Franchise Association 2026 economic outlook; company earnings reports and SEC filings.