During the Covid lockdowns, my wife and I occasionally ordered from major steakhouses like Morton’s and Ruth’s Chris, which offered aggressive delivery deals and meal kits.

Those promotions underscored how heavily steakhouses depended on in-person dining and how vulnerable they were when offices emptied, and business travel stalled.

“As remote or hybrid work continues to be popular, office attendance has fallen. Less in-person work may increase office vacancy rates and reduce foot traffic to other businesses located in office-dense areas,” shared the Federal Reserve of Kansas City.

Basically, if people stopped going to the office or went in less often, the businesses built to serve office workers suffered.

That has a ripple effect to related businesses like hotels and fine dining establishments catering to business dinners and travelers.

“Policy restrictions closed service establishments across the United States during the
early months of COVID. As cities emerged from the lockdowns of the early pandemic period some, but not all, of this business returned, and many establishments in city centers remained closed,” The New York Fed shared in a special report on the Future of New York City.

One restaurant chain, McCormick & Schmick’s, suffered heavily from this change in work patterns, contributing to its steady decline from 60 locations at its peak to 13 now.

McCormick & Schmick’s keeps closing locations

McCormick & Schmick’s, a steak and seafood chain, was founded in Portland in 1979.

Its final location in Portland closed in March, 2025.

“We are grateful for our dedicated employees and the support of the Tigard community over the years,” said COO Shah Ghani in a statement reported by KPTV. “While this location is closing, we are working on relocating our team members to nearby properties and look forward to welcoming our guests at Jake’s Grill, Jake’s Crawfish, and other McCormick & Schmick’s locations nationwide.”

Those brands, like McCormick & Schmick’s are owned by Landry’s Restaurants.

Locals took the closure hard.

“We thought it would be here forever,” said Bill Stockton, who came to get one last meal at the restaurant with his wife, Claudia, Saturday afternoon.

“I think they’re irreplaceable,” said Claudia Stockton. “There’s nothing like it.”

Landry’s is not public and does not report sales data, but Nation’s Restaurant News shared some insight as to why the chain has been struggling.

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“Houston-based steak and seafood concept McCormick & Schmick’s lost 10.2% in sales in 2024 to $82.1 million, while closing 8.7% of its system to end the year with 21 locations. The chain, part of Landry’s Inc., once boasted more than 60 locations,” Nation’s Restaurant News reported.

Those closures continued in 2025, and the chain only has 13 locations left, according to its website.

Discretionary spending cuts and population shifts have hurt steakhouses.

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A look at some McCormick and Schmick’s shutdowns

  • Several McCormick & Schmick’s locations have closed this year as the upscale seafood and steakhouse chain trims its footprint under parent company Landry’s Hospitality, according to SeafoodSource.
  • Last Oregon restaurant closed in March 2025, marking the end of the brand’s presence in its home state of Oregon, shared Eater.
  • McCormick & Schmick’s in Chicago’s Loop abruptly shut after its lease expired, surprising staff and diners late in 2025, reported NBC Chicago.
  • Charlotte’s final McCormick & Schmick’s location closed in May 2025, ending more than 20 years of service in that city. k1047.com

“A whole lot of these companies are finding their sales aren’t turning out to be as strong as expected,” says Jim Sanderson, a restaurant industry analyst for Northcoast Research. Customer traffic at full-service restaurants in the third quarter of 2024 was down 3% from a year ago and is 17% below the same period in 2019, according to CREST, Time reported.

McCormick & Schmick’s is not the only steakhouse chain closing locations. Outback Steakhouse, owned by Bloomin’ Brands, recently decided to close 41 locations.

“We periodically review our asset base and, in our latest review, we made the decision to close 41 underperforming locations. The majority of these restaurants were older assets with leases from the ‘90s and early 2000s,” Bloomin’ Brands CEO David Deno shared during the chain’s fourth-quarter earnings call.

Consumers are cutting back on discretionary spending

Many American consumers have cut back on their discretionary spending, according to the latest Consumerwise State of the US Consumer report from McKinsey.

“The ‘lipstick effect,’ or the tendency for consumers to indulge in small luxuries or affordable treats during periods of economic uncertainty, has expanded beyond the beauty aisle. Even as 75% of consumers reported trading down in at least one category, 39% of consumers expressed their intent to splurge on a range of categories,” according to the study.

Steakhouses, however, appear to be a luxury that some people are willing to forgo.

“But perhaps most crucially, consumer attitudes toward dining have shifted dramatically. The same inflation hitting restaurants is also affecting their customers. When grocery bills and mortgage payments consume more of the monthly budget, that $75 ribeye becomes harder to justify, even for six-figure earners,” Money Talks News reported.

Bankrate’s 2025 Discretionary Spending Survey shows that 54% of U.S. adults say they expect to spend less on travel, dining out, or entertainment in 2025 than they did in 2024. Notably, that number is higher than the 49% in last year’s survey who expected to spend less in 2024 than they did in 2023.

“The cumulative effects of inflation and high interest rates have been straining households, contributing to record levels of credit card debt and causing consumer sentiment to plummet, Bankrate Senior Industry Analyst Ted Rossman shared.

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