The barbecue chain shut its last 20 restaurants overnight in April 2026. The real decline started three years earlier, when FAT Brands began converting its best Smokey Bones locations into a different, more profitable restaurant brand instead of investing in the one it had just bought.
Every Smokey Bones restaurant in the United States has closed. The barbecue chain shut its last 20 locations on Monday, April 27, 2026, ending 27 years in business that started with a single restaurant in Orlando, Florida.
At the chain’s Colonie, New York location, longtime server Claudia Akley found out the same way most of her coworkers did that week, from a Facebook post, according to a Spectrum News 1 report. She had worked there for 19 years. New menus had gone out days earlier, and her schedule was still posted for the following Sunday. Nobody at the company had told her, or anyone else on staff, that the Monday night shift would be the last one.
The bankruptcy filing that made news in January 2026 explains why the company was in financial trouble. It does not explain why Smokey Bones disappeared while FAT Brands sold off almost every other restaurant chain it owned in the same case. That answer traces back to a decision FAT Brands made in 2023, the same year it bought the brand.
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Why Did FAT Brands Stop Investing in Smokey Bones?
Darden Restaurants founded Smokey Bones in Orlando in 1999 and grew the chain to roughly 128 locations within a few years. In 2007, Darden closed more than half the restaurants and sold the remaining 73 to the private equity firm Sun Capital Partners for $80 million. Sun Capital owned the chain for the next 16 years, during which it shrank further, down to about 60 locations by the time FAT Brands bought it in September 2023 for $30 million.
According to Restaurant Business Online’s reporting on the deal, FAT Brands founder and then CEO Andy Wiederhorn set a new direction almost immediately, converting the strongest Smokey Bones locations into Twin Peaks, a sports bar chain FAT Brands also owned that brought in far more money per restaurant. Two completed conversions produced average unit volumes near $7.8 million as Twin Peaks locations, compared with about $3.5 million as Smokey Bones, according to a September 2025 statement from Twin Hospitality Group, the company that came to own both brands.
Not every restaurant could make that switch. Liquor license rules and real estate limitations meant some Smokey Bones locations could not become Twin Peaks, Restaurant Business Online reported. FAT Brands, built primarily as a franchisor rather than a restaurant operator, closed those instead. Average unit volumes across the remaining Smokey Bones restaurants fell 18 percent between 2022 and 2025, and total system sales dropped by about a third over the same period, the outlet found.
By September 2025, the strategy had specific numbers attached to it. Twin Hospitality announced it would close 15 underperforming Smokey Bones locations, an increase from the 9 it had announced earlier that year, and convert 19 more into Twin Peaks. That left 26 Smokey Bones restaurants, which the company said were still profitable at the time.
How the Bankruptcy Ended What Was Left
FAT Brands’ broader debt problems, unrelated to the Smokey Bones conversions, caught up with the company a few months later. Years of borrowing to acquire other restaurant chains had left FAT Brands and Twin Hospitality Group with secured debt of roughly $1.5 billion. After missing a scheduled payment in October 2025, the companies filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on January 26, 2026. At the time, the company said Smokey Bones would keep operating normally through the case.
Roughly 14 more Smokey Bones locations closed without notice that same January. Restaurant Business Online also reported that in 2025, before any of this, FAT Brands had used Smokey Bones itself as collateral to raise cash through a merchant cash advance, a form of short term financing businesses typically turn to once other borrowing options have closed off.
When the bankruptcy court approved sales covering the rest of the FAT Brands portfolio in May 2026, close to a billion dollars changed hands. Twin Peaks sold to a group of lenders for $359.5 million in converted debt. Fatburger, Johnny Rockets, Fazoli’s, and about a dozen smaller brands sold together for $595 million. Even Hot Dog on a Stick, a mall food court chain, found a buyer for $8 million. Smokey Bones did not. Trade publication QSR Magazine reported that the chain simply failed to attract a qualified bid.
Which States Lost Smokey Bones Restaurants First?
By the time of the final closure, Smokey Bones restaurants were already gone from more than half the states the chain had once served. Only eight states still had an open location on the last night.
| Already closed before April 2026 | Open until the final shutdown |
|---|---|
| Florida | Maryland |
| Georgia | Massachusetts |
| Illinois | New York |
| Indiana | North Carolina |
| Kentucky | Ohio |
| Michigan | Pennsylvania |
| Tennessee | Rhode Island |
| Virginia |
Are Smokey Bones Gift Cards Still Valid?
No. FAT Brands has confirmed that Smokey Bones gift cards are no longer redeemable anywhere, including at Twin Peaks locations under the same parent company.
Cardholders had one formal option, filing a claim through the FAT Brands and Twin Hospitality bankruptcy process before the deadline, known as the bar date, which was May 15, 2026. That date has passed. The more realistic option now is contacting your credit card company directly and asking about a chargeback, though most issuers only allow that within a few months of the original purchase.
Will Smokey Bones Come Back?
There is no sign that it will. FAT Brands has not said whether the Smokey Bones name could be sold or relaunched separately, and nothing in the bankruptcy case points in that direction.
Twin Peaks came out of the same bankruptcy case with 114 restaurants and a new owner. Smokey Bones came out of it with nothing. FAT Brands had already spent two years converting its best locations into a different brand and using what remained as collateral for emergency financing. By the time the rest of the company’s restaurant chains went up for sale, nobody wanted what was left of Smokey Bones.
