Bloomin' Brands Cuts 21 Outback Sites, Outback Closing 22 More

Bloomin' Brands carried out an outback closing of 21 underperforming Outback Steakhouse restaurants in 2025 and identified 22 more locations where it will not renew leases. Eric Christel said the company completed a detailed review of its restaurant base and moved to concentrate resources on healthier units.

“This year, we completed a detailed review of our restaurant base and identified 21 underperforming restaurants, which we closed last week. We also identified 22 restaurants in which we would not renew the lease,” Christel said on Bloomin' Brands’ third-quarter 2025 earnings call. “Most of those leases expire in the next 4 years. Our goal is to focus our resources on the remaining healthier restaurants,” he said.

Outback's 38-year chain

38 years after Outback Steakhouse launched, the chain is still trying to reset around menu, execution, and customer retention. The company has lost share to Texas Roadhouse and LongHorn Steakhouse, and it has had a particularly hard time attracting customers with household incomes below $100,000.

4 strategic platforms now guide Bloomin' Brands’ response, Michael Spanos said on the company’s fourth-quarter earnings call: “Our strategy is based on 4 strategic platforms, which are to: one, deliver a remarkable dine-in experience; two, drive brand relevancy; three, reignite a culture of ownership and fun; [and] four, invest in our restaurants.” That puts the lease decisions inside a broader turnaround rather than a one-time pruning exercise.

Menu, value, execution

1 renewed push across the menu, value, and execution has already been laid out by the company as part of the overhaul. Roland Ornelas of Panda Restaurant Group put the operating pressure plainly: “The lifeblood of the restaurant industry is new items. You need something to speak about,” and “You have to really focus on that value to guests — but you also have to steal customers from your competitors.”

22 more leases are now on a glide path toward expiration, with most due over the next 4 years. For diners, that means the footprint keeps shrinking at locations the company no longer wants to carry; for investors, it means the next stage of the turnaround depends on whether the healthier restaurants can do enough work to offset the closures already in motion.