Of all the restaurant categories, it was pizza that experienced the slowest growth in 2023, with sales only increasing by 3%, per Nation’s Restaurant News. Despite being a certified nation of pizza lovers, it seems like living in the golden age of food delivery has lured our stomachs (and our wallets) elsewhere when it comes to eating out or ordering food — and our go-to pizza chains are suffering as a result.
The past few years have seen multiple companies shutter locations en masse, with some even forced to file for bankruptcy as the cost of food and labor soars and revenue drops. From takeout giants like Papa Johns to casual dining spots like Anthony’s Coal Fired Pizza & Wings, the pizza industry is struggling across the board. While it’s unlikely that we’ll ever see a mass exodus of all of our favorite chains, there have been red flags for several companies lately. Not to jinx anything, but we have a bad feeling that these pizza chains are on thin ice.
Sad though it may be to accept, the Pizza Hut of our youth is long gone. The chain started culling its dine-in locations in 2019, with about 500 restaurants sacrificed by Pizza Hut’s parent company, Yum Brands!, so it could double down on delivery. While you can still find a handful of Pizza Hut “Classics” — AKA the restaurants that still retain those nostalgic red booths, wonderfully tacky chandeliers, and wood-paneled walls — the magic of the old-school Pizza Hut experience is pretty much extinct, which may be why it’s taken such a heavy hit in recent years.
It may rank second in the U.S. for pizza sales, but income still slumped at Pizza Hut in 2024. A major franchisee, EYM Pizza LP, filed for bankruptcy in July 2024 after it was sued by Pizza Hut for not paying its royalties. This affected 127 stores, with 15 restaurants also shuttered by EYM Pizza LP earlier in the summer. A few years earlier, around 300 more underperforming restaurants closed after an even bigger franchisee, NPC International, also went bankrupt. Pizza Hut’s luck hasn’t been much better across the pond. At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, 10% of its restaurants in the U.K. were permanently closed.
Anthony’s Coal Fired Pizza & Wings was built off the back of one man’s impossible mission: finding decent pizza in Florida. The man in question was Anthony Bruno, a New York native who struggled with the lack of decent pies after relocating from Long Island to the Sunshine State and took it upon himself to provide the solution. What started with a singular restaurant in Fort Lauderdale has expanded to Anthony’s Coal Fired Pizza & Wings locations up the East Coast. However, this slow-growing empire — known for its charred pizza crusts — has faced its fair share of roadblocks, with the latest (and biggest) hitting in 2024.
In September, its parent company, BurgerFi, joined the list of restaurants filing for bankruptcy in 2024. While BurgerFi vowed that this was part of a necessary process to conduct a turnaround plans for both its burger joints and Anthony’s Coal Fired Pizza & Wings, the company doesn’t have the best track record as the latter’s owner. Shares plummeted by over 10% after taking over the pizza business, with an investor filing a class action complaint claiming that it had “misrepresented to investors the purported benefits of Anthony’s acquisition,” (via WPTV). And multiple underperforming restaurants have closed in the run up and aftermath to BurgerFi’s bankruptcy declaration, including the only Anthony’s locations in Rhode Island and Maryland. We’re hoping for the best, but should this pattern continue, the end may be nigh for Anthony’s Coal Fired Pizza & Wings.
Papa Johns restaurant exterior at night – Eric Broder Van Dyke/Shutterstock
Papa Johns has worked hard to repair its reputation in recent years, having struggled with a stream of controversies involving its founder — and long since ousted CEO — John Schnatter. From being caught uttering a racial slur in a conference call to accusations of sexually inappropriate conduct, the many negative headlines that emerged about Schnatter in the late 2010s took their toll on the company. Not only did shares plummet, but Schnatter later put Papa Johns on blast to claim that its pizza has dropped in quality (eating 40 pizzas in 30 days to test his hypothesis) and that his exit was set up by someone on the inside.
Fortunately, with Schnatter out of the picture, the company has managed to patch up its image in the years since through stunts such as recruiting NBA legend Shaquille O’Neal as a brand ambassador, it’s still not in the strongest position. Not only did O’Neal duck out of his board position in February, but Papa Johns has experienced a slide in sales in 2024, sparking urgent measures — such as switching up its management team — to try and regain momentum. The general consensus is that customers think its pizza is just too expensive, with Papa Johns embracing more promotions and deals to try to appeal to the budget-conscious. As sales drop, Papa Johns has shuttered several under-performing stores in the U.S. in 2024. It has also downsized its second biggest market, the U.K., where it has closed 50 locations.
Papa Murphy’s restaurant exterior – digitalreflections/Shutterstock
Papa Murphy’s has always stood out from the pizza pack thanks to its take-and-bake concept. Customers pick up ready-made pizzas, only to cook them at home. This drastically slashes Papa Murphy’s operating costs compared to its competitors (pizza ovens don’t come cheap, nor does the kitchen space). However, that hasn’t been enough to protect Papa Murphy’s from the sector’s decline in recent years, with the company reporting that growth was at a standstill in October 2024.
Based out of Washington, Papa Murphy’s slashed its store numbers in 2024. In the third quarter alone, it lost about 100 stores. The majority of these stores were franchised, with the owners making the decision to close up shop rather than MTY Food Group itself. As CEO Eric Lefebvre said in an investors call, (via Investing.com), “We try to save the stores as much as possible, but there are instances where we can’t necessarily save the store because we don’t have the proper infrastructure to run those stores in those markets where we can’t find a new franchisee for them.”
These closures are nothing new. In 2023, it was reported that Papa Murphy’s had closed over 100 locations in the past two years. While it still retains hundreds of restaurants across the U.S., plus an international presence in Canada and the United Arab Emirates, it seems like Papa Murphy’s is on shaky ground.
Workers making pizza at Oath Pizza – rblfmr/Shutterstock
Oath Pizza prides itself on selling “100% feel-good pizza.” Personally, we “feel good” every time we eat pizza, but we get where its coming from. All of the chain’s pizzas are made with an avocado oil crust and fresh, wholesome ingredients on thin crusts. Having started out of a seaside shop on Nantucket Island, this ethos made Oath Pizza popular enough to expand through New York, Pennsylvania, California, and beyond.
At its peak, Oath Pizza boasted 17 locations. As per its website, this number has shrunk to just three (one apiece in Massachusetts, California, and Washington), as of December 2024, all of which are franchised. This follows an aggressive closure strategy in the past two years, with Oath Pizza closing its first location in November 2023 and continuing the trend ever since. In November 2024, Oath Pizza filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy, declaring that it held less than $500,000 in assets and had racked up as much as $50 million in debt. With zero corporate locations remaining, Oath Pizza’s future looks far more uncertain than a lot of the other chains on this list.
Chuck E. Cheese exterior – Chase D’animulls/Shutterstock
To answer your most burning questions: Yes, Chuck E. Cheese somehow still exists, and, yes, it already filed for bankruptcy. Twice, in fact. Half pizza restaurant and half arcade, Chuck E. Cheese (whose “E” stands for entertainment, because, of course) first filed in 1984 after expanding too quickly and defaulting on a $50 million bond. It later filed for a second time at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, but managed to emerge from bankruptcy that same year after creditors took over the company and cleared a whopping $705 million of its debt.
As of 2024, Chuck E. Cheese still isn’t in the strongest position. In December 2023, Reuters claimed that the chain was looking for a potential buyer. Throughout 2024, there have been multiple reports of store closures, including locations in Pennsylvania, Missouri, and North Dakota. While Chuck E. Cheese is doing everything it can to cling on to relevance — including launching a new subscription service in August 2024 — the reality is that its identity as a pizza restaurant has always been a footnote to the fact that it’s primarily a place to celebrate your birthday, play skee ball, and (if you’re a parent) zone out while scrolling through Instagram. If chains with decent pizza are struggling to get by, we’re not sure how long Chuck E. Cheese — which we once placed last in our ranking of pizza restaurants — can stay in the game.
Pizza and a lemonade on a tabletop – Fired Pie / X, formerly known as Twitter
Fast-casual pizza restaurants were hit hard by COVID-19. The business model counts on customers personalizing their pies as they’re made fresh in-store, which was obviously pretty challenging when the entire world was told to stay at home. Even since restrictions were lifted, recovery has been slow, with Fired Pie one of the many companies forced to downsize since the peak pandemic days of 2020. The Phoenix-based pizza chain operated 21 restaurants in May of that year, but this number has since dropped to just 13 as of 2024.
In November 2024, Fired Pie — which also offers fresh, customizable salads in addition to pizza — was forced to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. With approximately $440,000 in debt, the company’s owner, Douglas Doyle, claimed that Fired Pie’s misfortunes came down to both the lingering impact of the pandemic and the soaring costs of both food and labor. In other words, it buckled under the same conditions weighing down the rest of the restaurant industry as of late. The company plans to undergo restructuring to boost its chances of survival, with this plan said to include the closure of as-yet-undisclosed underperforming restaurants.
Pizza from MOD Pizza on wrapping – EQRoy/Shutterstock
Like the rest of the fast-casual pizza space, MOD Pizza has struggled to bounce back from the pandemic. Before COVID-19 hit the scene, MOD Pizza was one of the fastest-growing restaurant chains in the U.S., having also kickstarted its international expansion with nine restaurants in the U.K. Unfortunately, things aren’t quite as hot for the chain today, with 2024 heralding in an era of mass downsizing for MOD Pizza.
After starting the year by replacing its CEO and experiencing a 10.7% increase in sales in 2023, MOD Pizza axed 26 stores in the first quarter of 2024. While California saw the most closures, MOD Pizza insisted that the move had nothing to do with a recent minimum wage hike for fast food workers in the Golden State. A few months later, it was rumored that the chain was on the edge of bankruptcy after closing 44 restaurants, only for Elite Restaurant Group to step in and take over as owner at the last minute. A thorough new turnaround plan is now underway, with recent changes including the abandonment of its former “one price fits all” model and the introduction of a new tiered pricing system, (via Restaurant Dive). Here’s hoping that it is enough to pull MOD Pizza back from the brink.
A slice of deep-dish pizza – Uno’s Pizzeria and Grill / Facebook
Ike Sewell opened the first Uno’s Pizzeria in Chicago in 1943, making it one of the oldest names on this list. Considering its origins, it should come as no surprise that it specializes in Chicago-style pizza — in fact, Sewell is often credited as one of the innovators behind these delicious deep-dish pies. New franchised stores popped up over the decades, giving those hoping for a taste of authentic Chicago pizza a chance to sample a slice everywhere from Wisconsin to Florida. It also launched a spinoff concept called Uno Dué Go, which offered a blend of pizza, sandwiches, salads, bakery items, and even alcohol.
These numbers have dwindled as of late, leaving just 56 restaurants as of December 2024, down from approximately 80 in 2023. This follows a string of random closures throughout 2024, as well as the near-total farewell to Uno Dué Go in 2020, with the last remaining outlet located at Dallas Fort Worth International Airport. Uno’s Pizzeria has remained relatively quiet about the reasons behind the mass closures, but we can only assume that poor sales play a role. Whatever the reason, we would not be entirely shocked if Uno’s serves its last deep-dish slice at some point in the near future.
We’ll preface this with the disclaimer that Domino’s is the biggest pizza chain in both the U.S. and the world, and we definitely don’t think its empire will crumble overnight. At the same time, there have been a few warning signs in recent years that have us concerned about its long-term prospects — especially on the international front.
Like a lot of its competitors, sales were slow (or rather, slow-er) than usual for Domino’s in 2024. While it managed to grow same-store sales in the U.S. by 3% in the third quarter of the year, it still failed to meet expectations, despite going all in on reward schemes and discount offerings to tempt bargain-hunters come dinner. Sales struggled even more outside the U.S., where same-store sales increased by just 0.8% — considerably less than the expected increase of 2.9%.
Domino’s has taken a particularly big hit in Asia, where same-store sales plummeted by 8.9% in the second half of 2023. Domino’s Pizza Enterprises (which operates Domino’s restaurants in Australia, New Zealand, Asia, and Europe, and saw its value drop by $1.5 billion in January 2024) partially blamed this on boycotts and anti-American sentiment relating to the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas. Domino’s failure to strike gold in both France and Japan was also cited as a contributing factor, with 110 stores ultimately axed across both countries in July 2024.
Hand pulling pizza slice from Mary’s Pizza Shack box – maryspizzashack / Instagram
Mary’s Pizza Shack was started by an actual Mary (Mary Fazio, to be exact) in 1959. Armed with $700 and her father’s old recipes, Fazio cooked in an open kitchen at the chain’s first location in Sonoma County in Northern California. By 2014, the company had worked its way up to 20 locations, all serving the same made-from-scratch Italian fare. As of 2024, this number has been halved as Mary’s Pizza Shack struggles in the face of higher operational costs.
While no additional restaurants were closed in 2024, three shuttered in 2023. This came as part of a restructuring that started a year prior and involved splitting into smaller, family-run factions instead of a singular company. In September 2024, this restructuring also saw Mary’s Pizza Shack file for bankruptcy. “A thorough discovery process determined this is the best route to preserve Mary Fazio’s, our Noni, legacy,” the restaurant said in a public statement. “Mary’s granddaughters will acquire the brand in this process.”
For now, Mary’s Pizza Shack is still operating as usual throughout Northern California, with the chain vowing that it “isn’t going anywhere.” However, with operational costs still at a high — and California in particular dubbed the hardest state to open a restaurant — we wouldn’t say it’s out of the woods just yet.
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