Outback Steakhouse Closures: The Financials Behind the Shutdowns and a Full List of Closures

Bloomin’ Brands, the parent company of Outback Steakhouse and Carrabba’s, announced it's closing restaurants. The November 6th press release was a masterclass in corporate communication, pairing a narrative of "great momentum" with the quiet disposal of underperforming assets. They’re shuttering 43 locations—or more precisely, closing 21 immediately and walking away from 22 others as their leases expire over the next four years.

But the most significant data point in the entire announcement wasn't a number. It was an omission. The company provided no list of which restaurants are closing. For every franchisee, employee, and regular customer in places like Michigan, where the company has a significant footprint, the news landed with a thud of uncertainty. It's a classic information vacuum, and in my experience, companies don't create those by accident.

The official line from CEO Mike Spanos is that all four of their brands—Outback, Carrabba's, Bonefish Grill, and Fleming's—drove positive comparable store sales growth for the first time since early 2023. This is presented as the foundation for a turnaround. Yet, in the same breath, the company announced it was suspending its dividend to "reallocate available free cash flow into strategic investments" and "pay down debt."

This is the kind of discrepancy that should set off alarms. How does a company with "great momentum" and positive growth across the board suddenly need to suspend shareholder payments to fund its base business? It feels like a ship captain announcing a record-breaking speed while crew members are quietly seen jettisoning cargo over the side. The two actions don't correlate, which begs a more critical question: what is the real state of the balance sheet?

The Strategic Ambiguity

Let’s be clear: closing underperforming stores is standard practice. It's basic portfolio management. What’s unusual here is the opacity. By withholding the list of closures, Bloomin' Brands avoids a cascade of negative local news stories. Instead of 43 individual headlines about a beloved local steakhouse closing in Canton or Lansing, they get one national story that’s easier to control. It's a strategy of containment.

I've analyzed hundreds of these corporate restructuring announcements, and the refusal to provide a simple list of closures is a classic tell. It’s a tool to manage sentiment, prevent a run on gift cards, and stop employees at still-viable locations from preemptively jumping ship. The company operates dozens of restaurants in Michigan (30 locations across all four brands, based on their websites), and right now, every single one of them is operating under a cloud.

Imagine you’re the manager of the Bonefish Grill in Novi. You read this news. Your phone starts ringing—local reporters, nervous staff, maybe even your landlord. But you have no information. Corporate hasn't told you if you're safe or if you're on the list. You're left to parrot a non-answer, the sound of your own voice echoing in an office that suddenly feels temporary. That manufactured uncertainty is a direct, albeit unquantifiable, cost of this communication strategy.

The company frames this as part of a "turnaround strategy," with a focus on the Outback Steakhouse brand. This is where the dividend suspension makes a bit more sense. It signals that the "turnaround" requires more capital than the company's operations are currently generating. The positive comparable sales might be so razor-thin—say, 0.5%—that they don't produce enough cash to both reinvest and pay shareholders. So, what does this turnaround actually entail, and is it a genuine overhaul or just a desperate attempt to patch holes in a leaking hull?

The Unspoken Numbers

The narrative focuses on closures, but the real story might be in the 22 leases they won't renew over the next four years. This isn't an emergency maneuver; it's a long-term, slow-motion retreat from unprofitable markets. It suggests the company has identified a structural weakness in a significant portion of its portfolio—about 2.5% of its total restaurant count, to be more exact—and is choosing to bleed them out slowly rather than rip off the bandage.

This raises a crucial question that the press release conveniently ignores: what is the profile of these dying locations? Are they all in specific regions? Are they older stores with outdated interiors? Are they primarily one brand (likely Outback, given the stated focus of the turnaround) or spread across the portfolio? Without this data, any analysis is speculative. The company has effectively insulated its strategy from public scrutiny.

We know there are about 680 Outback Steakhouses, 203 Carrabba's, 159 Bonefish Grills, and 66 Fleming's locations nationwide. The 43 closures represent a small fraction of the total, but they are never chosen at random. They are the weakest performers, the canaries in the coal mine. Their failure tells a story about shifting consumer tastes, demographic changes, or operational decay that likely affects other locations as well. By hiding the list, Bloomin' Brands is hiding the data that would allow us to see the pattern.

For the people in Michigan, from Ann Arbor to Traverse City, the question is the one on everyone's mind: Outback, Carrabba's owner closing restaurants. Are any in Michigan? The fact that Bloomin' Brands has decided the cost of that widespread anxiety is worth the benefit of a controlled narrative tells you everything you need to know about their priorities.

A Strategy of Calculated Obscurity

Let's drop the pretense. This isn't a story about a handful of restaurant closures; it's a story about a company that is fundamentally uncomfortable with transparency. The decision to pair a positive-spin press release with a dividend cut and a secret list of closures is a calculated move. It suggests the internal numbers are far softer than the public narrative lets on, and management is more concerned with shaping market perception than with providing clarity to its own stakeholders—including the employees who show up to work every day wondering if they'll have a job next month. The most telling data point isn't in the financial tables; it's in the information they're deliberately choosing to hide.