True Food Kitchen Files Chapter 11, Closes 12 Restaurants and Pulls Back to 14 States

True Food Kitchen filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on Oct. 4 in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Texas, and the health-focused restaurant chain has already closed 12 of its 46 locations. The closures include units in Bethesda, Maryland; Reston, Virginia; Garden City, New York; and Chicago, with the rest unnamed in public filings so far. The chain now operates 34 restaurants across 14 states, down from 18 states at the start of the year, according to Nation's Restaurant News and Hoodline.

The Scottsdale, Arizona-based chain was founded in 2008 in Phoenix by Dr. Andrew Weil, the integrative-medicine author, and Sam Fox, the restaurateur behind Fox Restaurant Concepts. The menu was built around Weil's anti-inflammatory food pyramid, heavy on vegetables and whole grains, and it carried the brand into 18 states at its peak. Ownership has changed hands more than once since then. P.F. Chang's converted a credit line into a majority stake back in 2010. Centerbridge Partners picked up control when it bought P.F. Chang's two years later. Oprah Winfrey invested in 2018 and joined the board, and ownership records show she's stepped down from that seat as of this month while keeping her minority stake. HumanCo and Manna Tree Partners, both wellness-focused investment firms, became the primary backers more recently, putting over $100 million into the company across several rounds.

The 12 closures pulled the brand out of some of its smaller East Coast outposts while leaving its Sunbelt core mostly intact. A chain shedding a quarter of its restaurants is making choices about which markets it can still defend. That matters more than the raw count.

True Food Kitchen listed roughly $42.1 million in debt, a figure that includes merchant cash advance agreements, a form of short-term financing that tends to show up at chains that borrowed against future sales to fund growth that didn't pan out. HumanCo TFK IV has committed $20 million in debtor-in-possession financing, subject to court approval, to keep the remaining 34 restaurants open during a court-supervised sale process. Systemwide sales came in at $312 million in 2025, down 0.7% from $314 million in 2024. Fastcasual.com reported that's the first annual sales decline in the company's history. The filing also pointed to money spent on concepts that strayed from the original idea, including a quick-service spinoff called True Food To-Go in Tempe, Arizona, plus ghost kitchens and delivery-only operations, all of which have since been shut down.

Jeff Chandler, hired as CEO in July after running Hopdoddy Burger Bar, framed the filing as a reset rather than a retreat. "This process is the best path forward to simplify the business and focus on what we do best: delivering craveable, health-forward food and genuine hospitality," he said in the company's announcement. Chandler took over from interim chief Jim Dunn, who'd been running things since John Williams resigned as CEO in December 2024.

The debt mix matters here. Merchant cash advances carry rates that make a Chapter 11 filing look like the cheaper option fast. The 363 sale process will decide, location by location, which leases get assumed and which get rejected over the coming weeks. HumanCo and Manna Tree already control a combined 69% of the company. That stake points toward an insider-led sale, the kind of deal that tends to keep more leases intact.

The geography says something too. True Food Kitchen gave up Reston, Garden City and Bethesda, all outside the Southwest base where Fox Restaurant Concepts built the brand in the first place, and kept that base largely whole. A "better for you" fast-casual chain posting its first-ever annual sales decline also fits a pattern showing up at other wellness-positioned concepts this year.