After closing 1,000 restaurants, seafood chain sees clear sailing

Sometimes, a concern has to get smaller successful bid to grow, oregon astatine slightest that's what executives, including Wendy's CFO Ken Cook, accidental erstwhile they explicate wherefore they're closing locations.

"We're focused connected improving restaurant-level economics, taking a hard look astatine underperforming restaurants successful our strategy from some the fiscal and lawsuit acquisition position and moving with franchisees to amended those, transportation those to different relation oregon perchance closing them," helium said during the chain's third-quarter net call.

Closing up to 350 restaurants, helium said, volition amended the financials of those that stay and permission franchise operators with currency to put successful their remaining locations.

Long John Silver's, an iconic fast-food concatenation similar Wendy's, has besides been closing locations — dropping from implicit 1,000 units successful 2015 to less than 500 currently, based connected the Consumer Edge 2026 Restaurant Outlook report.

At its peak, the concatenation operated much than 1,400 restaurants, according to Food Republic.

The company's Senior Vice President Tony Ellis, overmuch similar Cook, believes that the closures, astatine slightest the ones implicit the past 3 years, person really enactment the seafood concatenation successful a beardown presumption to instrumentality to growth.

Long John Silver's footprint has shrunk

Tony Ellis told SeafoodSource that Long John Silver's has closed "roughly 110 to 120 locations implicit the past 3 years." He said the institution present operates 214 company-owned restaurants and astir 262 franchised units, which matches the full connected the company's edifice locator page.

Long John Silver's Chief Marketing Officer Laura Ellis said that not each of the closures were owed to fiscal performance.

"We privation our in-restaurant acquisition to beryllium arsenic affirmative arsenic the sensation of our food, truthful we've spent a ton of clip remodeling our footprint," she said. "As you tin imagine, our marque has been astir since 1969, truthful immoderate of our restaurants were successful dire request of a facelift. This means immoderate of those restaurants are impermanent closures, and immoderate are a departure from humanities strategy."

Tony Ellis explained that astir 70 of the closures came from the concatenation exiting co-branded locations with Taco Bell, KFC, and A&W, which helium said aligns with "broader manufacture inclination of large chains progressively preferring single-brand locations."

The concatenation besides survived a 1998 Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing.

"The institution listed liabilities of $457.3 cardinal and assets of $329.1 cardinal successful the Chapter 11 filing precocious Monday successful U.S. Bankruptcy Court successful Delaware," the Tampa Times reported.