Wendy’s closing up to 6% of US locations in first half of 2026

Mary Walrath-Holdridge, USA TODAY

Wed, February 18, 2026 at 4:48 AM GMT+9 2 min read

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Fast-food chain Wendy’s will shutter 5% to 6% of its stores nationwide in the first half of 2026 as part of an ongoing downsizing plan.

Interim CEO Ken Cook first told investors in a Nov. 7 quarterly earnings call that the company would be closing a “mid single-digit percentage” of its nearly 6,000 locations nationwide.

On a Feb. 13 earnings call, Cook said the company had already closed 28 restaurants in the last quarter of 2025 as part of a planned 5% to 6% reduction.

Fast food chain Wendy’s will shutter 5% to 6% of its stores nationwide in the first half of 2026.

With around 5,969 locations operating nationwide at the end of the year, this would amount to roughly 300 to 360 store closures total. A list of exact locations slated for closure has not been announced.

USA TODAY did not immediately receive a response from Wendy’s.

Why is Wendy’s closing restaurants?

Wendy’s first announced closures in November, with Cook saying at the time that some restaurants “are a drag from a franchisee financial performance perspective.”

“The goal is to address and fix those restaurants,” he said.

In some cases, that would mean making improvements to technology or equipment or transferring struggling locations to new operators. In others, he said, it would mean closing the restaurants altogether.

Cook shared a similar message in the recent earnings call.

“By closing consistently underperforming restaurants, we are enabling our franchisee partners to increase focus on locations with the greatest potential for profitable growth,” Cook said. “Since we announced this program in November, we have been working with our franchisees to evaluate restaurants on a store-by-store basis.”

Wendy’s struggled with sales compared to some of its competitors in 2025, reporting an 11.3% decrease in same-store sales – revenue generated by stores open for at least a year – and an 8.3% loss in global systemwide sales in Q4. Global systemwide sales were down 3.5% overall in 2025 and same-store sales were down 5.6%.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Wendy’s closing hundreds of stores in coming months

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