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If your idea of pizza night involves doing just a little bit of the work yourself, we have some unfortunate news: Papa Murphy’s is about to get a lot smaller.
The well-known take-and-bake pizza chain is preparing to close around 50 restaurants across the U.S. over the next six to nine months, with the first closures beginning this week. The shutdowns are part of a larger restructuring by parent company MTY Food Group, which plans to close 68 underperforming corporate-owned restaurants across its massive portfolio of brands.
And, unfortunately, Papa Murphy’s is taking the biggest hit.
During the company’s second-quarter earnings call last week, MTY CEO Eric Lefebvre said Papa Murphy’s has struggled more than the group’s other U.S. brands in recent months. The chain—which has locations across the country, except for the Northeast—is famous for its slightly unusual pizza model: Employees make your customized pie in the restaurant, but instead of sliding it into an oven, they hand it over uncooked and you take it home and bake it yourself. It’s basically takeout with homework, but devotees to the chain have long loved the chance to pull a hot pie directly from their own ovens.
The restaurants being closed are corporate-owned locations that MTY had previously taken over in hopes of improving their performance. According to Lefebvre, the company evaluated the restaurants individually and decided that some no longer had a realistic path to a turnaround. (The 68 stores selected for closure across MTY’s brands have collectively lost more than $7 million, according to Lefebvre.)
Don’t expect all 50 Papa Murphy’s restaurants to disappear overnight, though. MTY plans to stagger the closures, giving the company time to deal with employees, landlords and distribution issues. “We don’t want to rush into any of these decisions and cause further damage,” Lefebvre said.
Papa Murphy’s has already been shrinking for several years. The chain’s restaurant count fell from 1,168 locations in 2023 to 1,014 in 2025, though most of those previous reductions involved franchised restaurants.
It’s also not the only major pizza chain cutting back: Pizza Hut and Papa Johns have both announced plans to close underperforming restaurants as the industry contends with abundant competition for America’s pizza money.
For Papa Murphy’s regulars, it might be worth checking whether your neighborhood location made the cut.