My colleague Alicia Kelso wrote about Mile High Pizza Company, a former Domino's franchisee which at one point had 25 locations, and which just closed 13 shops in Ohio.
This is a rare event for the Ann Arbor, Michigan-based chain. The 13 closures alone are equal to the total number of units the chain has closed in the past two years combined. There have been only two years in the past decade in which Domino’s closed more locations than that.
And this highlights one of the fast-food pizza chain’s quiet strengths: It simply does not close that many locations.
All legacy restaurant chains close some locations now and then. Age and size, franchisee dynamics, regional economics, and simple unforeseen circumstances usually cause some stores to close every year. Healthy brands are able to replace these units with new, hopefully better locations. Less healthy brands will not.
For instance, Domino’s last year closed seven locations, all of which were owned by franchisees. But it opened 179 locations, so it finished with 172 more locations than it started with, giving the brand just under 7,200 locations.
But those seven closures represent just 0.1% of the 7,014 locations with which Domino’s started the year with.
And that has been commonplace in recent years. Domino’s has not closed more than 15 locations in any of the past nine years. It has closed 95 locations over that period. Papa Johns closed 87 locations last year alone. Longtime rival Pizza Hut closed a net of 250 locations in 2025.
This is particularly remarkable given the industry volatility over that period. There was a pandemic in the middle of it, and while that period was generally good for pizza chains, it was generally bad for restaurants. Papa Johns, which had some of the industry’s strongest sales during the pandemic, closed 63 locations in 2020.
There was also the post-pandemic labor shortages, particularly of drivers, along with generationally high inflation and shrinking profitability, along with a brutal price war.
Domino’s lack of closures means its new unit openings aren’t simply replacements of older facilities but actual expansion, which meets its goal of providing better service in existing markets and bringing its pizzas to newer neighborhoods.
Domino’s is able to do this because it enjoyed a long run of sales growth at the unit level that made its stores more profitable. The chain has the best unit economics in its competitive set, generating at least $300,000 more per unit, per year, than its nearest competitor, Papa Johns.
During the Great Recession, when Domino’s stores were not as profitable, it closed a lot more locations.
The real estate is relatively simple for a concept that makes its own food on site, meaning it can go roughly anywhere, and the wide range of consumers that enjoy Domino’s products mean it can succeed in a wide range of zip codes.
That said, the sector itself faces some big challenges. Third-party delivery is taking share away from traditional delivery players, which is a big reason why both Papa Johns and Pizza Hut are shutting locations. Domino’s same-store sales in recent years have not been as strong as they had been consistently in the 2010s, which is why the brand is in the position it is in today.
The Ohio closures, plus the three the chain had closed already this year, mean Domino’s already has more closures this year than it had in any year since 2016. The company said called the Ohio shutdown an isolated event, but the brand will be hard-pressed to keep up the run it’s been on over the past decade.