The Cheesecake Factory Closed Some of Its Oldest Restaurants This Year — While Planning Its Biggest Opening Slate Yet

The Cheesecake Factory closed a handful of long-running locations at the start of 2026, including two that had operated for roughly three decades. At the same time, the company is on pace for its largest year of openings, with up to 26 new restaurants planned across its brands.

Four locations shut their doors in late January, according to reporting from Inc. and local outlets. Two were Cheesecake Factory restaurants with real history: the Friendship Heights location on Wisconsin Avenue in Washington, D.C., which had operated for 34 years, and the Baltimore Inner Harbor restaurant on Pratt Street, which closed after 29 years and affected about 115 employees. The other two were sister concepts in Houston — a Grand Lux Cafe and a Blanco Cocina + Cantina, both on Westheimer Road.

The Baltimore closure came as the Inner Harbor's Harborplace complex heads into redevelopment, so at least one of these was as much a landlord story as a restaurant story. The company kept its statement simple: "We are working with our staff to help transition them to other opportunities. We have truly enjoyed being a part of the Inner Harbor community over the last 29 years."

That leaves 218 Cheesecake Factory restaurants in the U.S. California has the most by a wide margin with 38, followed by Florida with 24 and Texas with 20.

The closures are a footnote next to the opening schedule. The company plans up to 26 new restaurants in 2026 across The Cheesecake Factory, North Italia, Flower Child, and its Fox Restaurant Concepts portfolio — the most it has ever opened in a year. Four opened in the second quarter. Longer term, the company has said it sees room for 300 Cheesecake Factory locations domestically, versus the 218 operating today.

The second quarter, reported July 28, was a good one. Revenue passed $1 billion for the first time in a single quarter. Comparable sales at the flagship brand rose 5.8%, and Flower Child — the company's fast-casual health-food concept — grew comps 13%. North Italia was the soft spot, with comps down 3%.

President David Gordon credited "strong operations, culinary innovation, and the launch of the Cheesecake Rewards app" for the traffic gains, and said the company is applying Cheesecake Factory practices — people programs, supply chain — to North Italia and Flower Child.

A few threads to follow from here. The closed D.C. and Baltimore locations were both older, urban, and attached to retail properties from a different era of shopping — worth noting for anyone tracking where full-service chains are renewing leases and where they're not, though four closures is too small a sample to call a pattern. The growth math also increasingly runs through the smaller brands: Flower Child is putting up the best comps in the portfolio, and it's a cheaper build than a 10,000-square-foot Cheesecake Factory. And the 300-unit domestic target for the flagship implies decades of runway at the current pace — the more telling number each quarter will be how many of the 26 openings actually land, and under which brand.