--- title: "Guzman y Gomez Closes US Stores in 2026 and What It Means…" canonical: "https://www.metaintro.com/blog/guzman-y-gomez-closes-us-stores-2026-restaurant-workers" language: "en" author: "drashtigarach" published: "2026-05-28T12:19:19.000Z" modified: "2026-10-02T19:31:16.818Z" --- [Back to Blog](/blog) [Jobs](/blog/tag/jobs)[Career](/blog/tag/career)[Layoffs](/blog/tag/layoffs)[Information](/blog/tag/information)[News](/blog/tag/news) # Guzman y Gomez Closes US Stores in 2026 and What It Means for Restaurant Workers Guzman y Gomez closed all 8 US stores in Chicago in 2026, cutting 500 jobs. Here is the full list, the WARN Act lawsuit, and what workers should do next. [![Drashti Garach](https://cdn.metaintro.com/rs:fill:40:40/q:72/plain/images/5719d740-e510-42bc-8017-e040d145f35f_1766029465094.png)Drashti Garach @DrashtiGarach](/blog/author/drashtigarach) [May 28, 2026](/blog/archive/2026/05)12 min read ![A darkened closed restaurant with chairs stacked on tables and a closure notice on the door](https://cdn.metaintro.com/rs:fill:1200:675/q:78/plain/images/kai.uwU1fmQW.png) [https://x.com/intent/tweet?text=Guzman%20y%20Gomez%20Closes%20US%20Stores%20in%202026%20and%20What%20It%20Means%20for%20Restaurant%20Workers&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.metaintro.com%2Fblog%2Fguzman-y-gomez-closes-us-stores-2026-restaurant-workers](https://x.com/intent/tweet?text=Guzman%20y%20Gomez%20Closes%20US%20Stores%20in%202026%20and%20What%20It%20Means%20for%20Restaurant%20Workers&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.metaintro.com%2Fblog%2Fguzman-y-gomez-closes-us-stores-2026-restaurant-workers)[http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.metaintro.com%2Fblog%2Fguzman-y-gomez-closes-us-stores-2026-restaurant-workers](http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.metaintro.com%2Fblog%2Fguzman-y-gomez-closes-us-stores-2026-restaurant-workers)[https://www.linkedin.com/sharing/share-offsite/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.metaintro.com%2Fblog%2Fguzman-y-gomez-closes-us-stores-2026-restaurant-workers&title=Guzman%20y%20Gomez%20Closes%20US%20Stores%20in%202026%20and%20What%20It%20Means%20for%20Restaurant%20Workers](https://www.linkedin.com/sharing/share-offsite/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.metaintro.com%2Fblog%2Fguzman-y-gomez-closes-us-stores-2026-restaurant-workers&title=Guzman%20y%20Gomez%20Closes%20US%20Stores%20in%202026%20and%20What%20It%20Means%20for%20Restaurant%20Workers)[mailto:?subject=Guzman%20y%20Gomez%20Closes%20US%20Stores%20in%202026%20and%20What%20It%20Means%20for%20Restaurant%20Workers&body=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.metaintro.com%2Fblog%2Fguzman-y-gomez-closes-us-stores-2026-restaurant-workers](mailto:?subject=Guzman%20y%20Gomez%20Closes%20US%20Stores%20in%202026%20and%20What%20It%20Means%20for%20Restaurant%20Workers&body=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.metaintro.com%2Fblog%2Fguzman-y-gomez-closes-us-stores-2026-restaurant-workers) When the Australian fast-casual chain Guzman y Gomez switched off the grills at all eight of its Chicago-area restaurants on May 22, 2026, it ended a six-year American experiment and left roughly 500 workers suddenly out of a job. As [Fast Company](https://www.fastcompany.com/91548085/guzman-y-gomez-closing-stores-full-list-doomed-us-locations) reported in its rundown of the doomed US locations, the company is pulling out of the United States entirely, shuttering stores in Evanston, Naperville, Schaumburg, Crystal Lake, Des Plaines, Buffalo Grove, Deerfield, and Chicago's Bucktown. For the cashiers, line cooks, and shift leads behind the counter, the closure was both abrupt and disorienting, and it quickly became a legal fight over whether they got the warning the law says they were owed. At [Metaintro](/), we track these restaurant and retail shutdowns so the people affected can move fast on their next move. ## Which Guzman y Gomez locations are closing? All eight of Guzman y Gomez's US restaurants are closing, and every one of them sits in the Chicago metro area. The list covers Evanston, Naperville, Schaumburg, Crystal Lake, Des Plaines, Buffalo Grove, Deerfield, and the Bucktown neighborhood of Chicago. The chain entered the American market in 2020 and never expanded beyond Chicagoland, so the eight-store footprint represents the company's entire US presence rather than a partial trim. Operations ceased the morning of May 22, 2026, just hours after staff first learned the news. This is a clean and total exit, not a restructuring that leaves a handful of flagship stores open. The company [confirmed the decision](https://whatnow.com/chicago/restaurants/an-australia-based-restaurant-brand-abruptly-closes-all-its-chicago-area-stores/) in a public statement that read, "After six years of burritos and big dreams in Chicagoland, we've made the difficult decision to close our US restaurants." For workers, the takeaway is blunt. There is no transfer to a nearby branch, no reduced-hours arrangement, and no quiet reopening under a new name on the horizon. When a brand walks away from an entire country, the local jobs go with it, and the suburbs that hosted these stores lose a familiar employer overnight. Several of these locations, including Evanston near Northwestern University and the busy Naperville and Schaumburg suburbs, had become reliable stops for students and commuters, which makes the speed of the shutdown feel even sharper for the staff who ran them. Many of these workers were students, part-timers, and first-job earners who counted on the consistent hours that a steady fast-casual brand provides, and the loss of all eight stores at once removes an entire tier of entry-level employment from the north and west suburbs in a single day. ## Why is Guzman y Gomez leaving the US market? The short answer is money. Guzman y Gomez poured a reported 115 million dollars into its American push and never reached the sales momentum it needed to justify staying. Founder and co-CEO Steven Marks framed the decision around shareholder capital, [telling investors](https://www.foxbusiness.com/economy/chipotle-rival-guzman-y-gomez-mexican-kitchen-closes-all-us-restaurants) that "I have always been confident in the differentiation of our food and guest experience, however this was not translating to an improvement in sales momentum." In plainer terms, the food was good, the customers were not coming in fast enough, and the math stopped working. The exit carries a real financial sting on paper. The company has guided that the US wind-down will produce a one-off profit and loss hit of roughly 30 to 40 million US dollars in its 2026 full-year results. Yet investors cheered the retreat anyway. [Shares on the Australian exchange](https://www.cnbc.com/2026/05/22/guzman-y-gomez-us-exit-australia-focus.html) jumped as much as 20 percent, climbing from around 18 dollars to roughly 21 dollars after the announcement, because the market saw the end of a long cash drain. That gap between a soaring stock and 500 lost jobs is the uncomfortable heart of this story. It is also a reminder that for publicly traded restaurant groups, the signal that thrills shareholders and the signal that lands on a worker's last paycheck can point in opposite directions on the very same day. ## What does the WARN Act lawsuit mean for the workers? Within days of the shutdown, former staff [filed a federal class-action lawsuit](https://evanstonroundtable.com/2026/05/24/no-notice-no-warning-former-guzman-y-gomez-employees-allege-labor-law-violation/) accusing Guzman y Gomez of violating both federal and Illinois Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification rules, known as the WARN Act. The suit, lodged on May 26, 2026 in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, centers on a single claim that matters enormously to anyone who loses a job in a mass closure. Workers say they were never given the advance notice the law requires. The WARN Act generally requires employers above a certain size to give 60 days of advance written notice before a plant closing or mass layoff. According to the complaint, that did not happen here. Staff describe learning about the closure through a leaked internal email at 8:11 p.m. on a Thursday, followed by an official company message about two hours later, with all operations ending by Friday morning. The Evanston restaurant alone had about 55 employees, and across all eight stores more than 500 people were affected. The severance picture was uneven too. Hourly workers reportedly received about one week of pay, while assistant managers and managers received three months. That split is exactly the kind of disparity that WARN claims are designed to address, because the law treats the 60-day notice period as wages the employer owes regardless of rank. If you ever face a sudden shutdown, the WARN Act is one of the first protections worth understanding, because it can translate into back pay and benefits when notice rules are broken. A successful claim can recover pay and the value of benefits for each day of missing notice, up to the full 60 days, plus attorney costs in many cases. Workers do not have to pay to join a class action, and the lead plaintiffs carry the case on behalf of everyone who qualifies. Cases like the recent [Subway closures across hundreds of US locations](/blog/subway-closures-2026-725-us-locations-restaurant-workers) show how often notice and timing become the central fight when a chain unwinds quickly. ## How does this compare to other restaurant closures in 2026? Guzman y Gomez is not closing in a vacuum. The casual-dining and fast-casual world has been thinning out across 2026, and the Chicago shutdown lands alongside a string of similar stories. Five Guys has been trimming underperforming locations, and the wave of [Five Guys store closures](/blog/five-guys-store-closures-doomed-locations-workers-2026) has hit hourly crews in much the same way. Larger chains are pulling back at scale as well, with [Pizza Hut closing 250 stores under Yum Brands](/blog/pizza-hut-250-store-closures-2026-yum-brands-layoffs) and the broader Yum layoffs reshaping how many corporate and restaurant roles exist at all. The pressure is not limited to one brand or one cuisine. [Smokey Bones has been closing dining rooms](/blog/smokey-bones-closing-stores-2026-restaurant-jobs) and cutting restaurant jobs, and across the Atlantic the [UK hospitality jobs crisis](/blog/uk-hospitality-jobs-crisis-2026-pub-restaurant-layoffs) has battered pubs and restaurants with the same mix of soft demand and rising costs. What ties these together is a simple pattern. When a concept cannot generate the sales it needs, the people at the lowest pay and the least notice tend to absorb the shock first. The GYG case is a sharper version of the trend because it is a full country exit rather than a pruning, but the mechanics for workers are identical. Recognizing that pattern early is half the battle for anyone working in food service right now, because the warning signs, slowing traffic, frozen hiring, and shrinking hours, often show up weeks before an official announcement. ## Who is Guzman y Gomez and where is it focusing next? Guzman y Gomez, often shortened to GYG, is an Australian-born Mexican fast-casual chain founded by native New Yorkers Steven Marks and Robert Hazan. It built a strong following at home and now employs more than 13,000 people worldwide, which puts the Chicago closure in perspective. The US arm was always the smallest and least proven slice of the business, and walking away from it lets the company double down on markets where it already wins. The brand is frequently described as an Australian answer to American fast-casual Mexican food, and its home-market loyalty is exactly what made the US stumble stand out. That refocus is explicit. The company says it will concentrate its energy and capital on Australia, Singapore, and Japan, where its underlying earnings are strong and growing. Its Australian business alone is expected to deliver roughly 85 million Australian dollars, about 61 million US dollars, in underlying earnings for the year, a jump of about 29 percent. For displaced Chicago workers, that geography is cold comfort, since the growth is happening on the other side of the world. But it explains why the brand felt comfortable cutting its losses so quickly and so completely. A company with a healthy core market and a small failing outpost has every financial incentive to act fast, and that calculus is precisely what leaves frontline staff with the shortest runway. ## What does this mean for your career and next move? If you worked at one of these stores, or at any restaurant facing a shaky future, the first practical step is to document everything. Save the closure email, note the exact dates you were told and when operations stopped, and keep your final pay stubs. Those details are exactly what a WARN Act claim turns on, and they can be the difference between walking away with one week of pay and recovering the notice period you were owed. Joining or simply tracking a class action like the GYG suit costs you nothing and can pay off later, sometimes months after the doors close. Beyond the legal piece, treat your restaurant experience as the transferable asset it is. Fast-casual work builds speed, customer service, cash handling, food safety, and the ability to keep calm under a lunch rush, and those skills move cleanly into other hospitality jobs, retail roles, and even early logistics and warehouse positions. Frame them that way on your resume, with concrete numbers like tickets per hour or sales per shift, and a hiring manager in an adjacent industry will see exactly why you are worth a callback. The good news is that hiring has not dried up everywhere. Brands like [Dollar Tree and Starbucks are opening new stores](/blog/dollar-tree-starbucks-new-stores-retail-hiring-2026) and hiring, and [Hardee's has been reopening shuttered restaurants](/blog/hardees-reopening-closed-restaurants-hiring-2026) and staffing back up. Even amid retail turbulence at places like [Nike](/blog/nike-cuts-1400-jobs-2026-turnaround-retail-layoffs) and [West Marine](/blog/west-marine-bankruptcy-2026-retail-layoffs), there are employers actively rebuilding their crews. [Target's 2026 rebound](/blog/target-2026-rebound-retail-job-seekers) has also reopened doors for retail job seekers, and the steady shift toward automation in the [AI-run store](/blog/ai-run-store-retail-workforce-impact-2026) points to where new skills will matter most. It also helps to set up job alerts and let smart matching surface roles for you, so you are spending your energy on interviews rather than scrolling through listings that do not fit. The job market for frontline workers is uneven, not closed, and the people who move first and apply widely tend to land first. --- ## Related Articles - [Five Guys Store Closures: Doomed Locations and What It Means for Workers in 2026](/blog/five-guys-store-closures-doomed-locations-workers-2026) - [Subway Closures 2026: 725 US Locations and the Restaurant Workers Affected](/blog/subway-closures-2026-725-us-locations-restaurant-workers) - [Pizza Hut 250 Store Closures 2026 and the Yum Brands Layoffs](/blog/pizza-hut-250-store-closures-2026-yum-brands-layoffs) - [Smokey Bones Closing Stores in 2026 and What It Means for Restaurant Jobs](/blog/smokey-bones-closing-stores-2026-restaurant-jobs) - [UK Hospitality Jobs Crisis 2026: Pub and Restaurant Layoffs](/blog/uk-hospitality-jobs-crisis-2026-pub-restaurant-layoffs) - [Hardee's Reopening Closed Restaurants and Hiring in 2026](/blog/hardees-reopening-closed-restaurants-hiring-2026) - [Dollar Tree and Starbucks Open New Stores in Retail Hiring 2026](/blog/dollar-tree-starbucks-new-stores-retail-hiring-2026) - [Target's 2026 Rebound and What It Means for Retail Job Seekers](/blog/target-2026-rebound-retail-job-seekers) - [The AI-Run Store and Its Impact on the Retail Workforce in 2026](/blog/ai-run-store-retail-workforce-impact-2026) --- ## People Also Asked ### Q: How many Guzman y Gomez stores are closing in the US? A: All eight of Guzman y Gomez's US restaurants are closing. Every location was in the Chicago metro area, including Evanston, Naperville, Schaumburg, Crystal Lake, Des Plaines, Buffalo Grove, Deerfield, and Bucktown, and they ceased operations on May 22, 2026 as the company exited the US market entirely. ### Q: Why did Guzman y Gomez leave the United States? A: The company never reached the sales momentum needed to justify the roughly 115 million dollars it invested over six years. Founder Steven Marks said the food and guest experience were strong but were not translating into sales growth, so the company chose to refocus on Australia, Singapore, and Japan. ### Q: What is the WARN Act lawsuit against Guzman y Gomez about? A: Former workers filed a federal class action on May 26, 2026 alleging the company failed to give the 60 days of advance notice the WARN Act requires before a mass closure. Staff say they learned of the shutdown by email hours before the doors closed, and the suit seeks back pay and benefits. Losing your job in a sudden closure is hard, and you should not have to navigate the search alone. If you are looking for your next opportunity after a restaurant or retail shutdown, [Metaintro](/) uses AI to surface roles that actually fit your experience and applies your skills to where the hiring is happening right now. 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