A major pizza chain is shutting dozens of corporate-owned stores as weak sales and squeezed customers hit the business — bad news for the chain, its workers, and the wider restaurant industry.

• MTY Group, which owns Papa Murphy's and 80+ other brands, will close 68 underperforming corporate-owned stores over 6–9 months, up to 50 of them Papa Murphy's.
• The closings start the week of July 13th and target stores that together lost more than $10 million.
• Pizza rivals Pizza Hut and Papa John's are also shutting stores as costs rise and shoppers, stretched by inflation, spend less.
• Papa Murphy's has already shrunk from 1,168 stores in 2023 to about 1,014 in 2025, mostly franchise locations.
• The company had even repossessed some stores to turn them around, then gave up and closed them anyway.

Outlook: More closings are likely if the remaining stores keep losing money, and slowing consumer spending points to more pain across the restaurant industry.