O’Charley’s is closing every remaining restaurant after service tonight, Wednesday, Sept. 9, and that includes both Columbus-area locations: 2272 Baltimore Reynoldsburg Rd. in Reynoldsburg and 6224 Gender Rd. in Canal Winchester. A third Ohio store at 1335 N. Lexington Springmill Rd. in Mansfield will also close.
The chain has not put out a statement, and its corporate Facebook and Instagram accounts have gone dark. The closure news comes from the restaurants themselves. NBC4 reported the central Ohio closures Wednesday afternoon based on social media posts and confirmations from individual stores, with the doors set to lock after 8 p.m. In Nashville, WKRN spoke with managers at six of the chain’s eight Middle Tennessee restaurants, who said staff at every location were told the restaurants close Wednesday at 8 p.m. Employees at several stores said they got the news Tuesday, one day ahead.
A worker at the Reynoldsburg store declined to comment and referred NBC4 to corporate, which had not responded as of publication.
What was already on the record
The numbers had been pointing this way. O’Charley’s is majority-owned by Cannae Holdings, a publicly traded company that files quarterly reports. In its second-quarter update filed with the SEC on Aug. 10, Cannae said same-store sales at O’Charley’s fell 13% in the quarter, that four O’Charley’s stores had already closed in 2026, and that the company was exploring strategic alternatives for its restaurant group. That filing counted 49 company-owned and three franchised O’Charley’s across 13 states.
Central Ohio has watched this chain shrink for years. In August 2023, O’Charley’s closed its Morse Road and Georgesville Square restaurants in Columbus along with two in the Dayton area. Three months later it closed the Westerville-area store at 285 Cleveland Ave. and the Grove City store at 1657 Stringtown Rd. At the time, CEO W. Craig Barber blamed “unprecedented disruptions” in casual dining. The Polaris building later became the first Ohio Fogo de Chão, and the Grove City building reopened as a Logan’s Roadhouse. Reynoldsburg and Canal Winchester were the last two standing in the Columbus area.
What happens next
Nobody from O’Charley’s has said what happens to gift cards or to the employees at the two local stores. When the chain closed Ohio locations in 2023, it offered gift-card refunds through its corporate office and said it was helping workers move to other stores. There are no other stores to move to this time. If the company issues a statement, this post will be updated.
The chain started in 1971 near Vanderbilt University in Nashville and was known for its rolls, chicken tenders and honey mustard. Anyone who wants one more visit has until 8 p.m. tonight, and both local stores have reportedly been busy since the news broke. A running list of the year’s Columbus restaurant closures is kept here.
