business
34-year-old pizza company files for bankruptcy
Key takeaways
- The rising cost food and operations, changing customer tastes, new competition in a particularly saturated location and, above all, a changing market can sink a company that otherwise had everything it needed.
- Brands-owned Pizza have both recently confirmed plans to close dozens of underperforming locations to narrow profit margins amid flagging sales in 2025.
- In May 2026, Washington-based Smoking Monkey Pizza ended up filing for Chapter 11 protection two months after California competitor North County Pizza Inc. did the same.
The rising cost food and operations, changing customer tastes, new competition in a particularly saturated location and, above all, a changing market can sink a company that otherwise had everything it needed.
Pizza giants Papa John's and Yum! Brands-owned Pizza have both recently confirmed plans to close dozens of underperforming locations to narrow profit margins amid flagging sales in 2025.
In May 2026, Washington-based Smoking Monkey Pizza ended up filing for Chapter 11 protection two months after California competitor North County Pizza Inc. did the same. In each case, the company named rising debts as flagging sales could no longer justify the number of operating locations opened during more profitable times.
Article preview — originally published by Yahoo Finance. Full story at the source.
Read full story on Yahoo Finance →
More top stories
Also covered by
Aggregated and edited by the Scoop newsroom. We surface news from Yahoo Finance alongside other reporting so you can compare coverage in one place.
Editorial policy · Corrections · About Scoop