A Papa Murphy's Take 'N' Bake Pizza that had served Texarkana customers for nearly 20 years shut its doors for good after employees were given only two to three days' notice. The store at 3421 Richmond Road served its final customers before closing, leaving its four active employees suddenly out of work.
The closure was not a decision made by corporate leadership alone. According to Texarkana Today, franchise operator Tom Lovelace Company chose to leave Texarkana, per store manager Jacob Owney, even though the location had met its internal food-cost and labor targets. The Richmond Road store had operated since 2006, and Tom Lovelace Company says it will keep its other Papa Murphy's locations open, closing only this one site.
Tom Lovelace Company is Papa Murphy's largest franchise operator, running roughly 96 locations nationwide after expanding its Texas footprint with the 2018 acquisition of 13 Dallas-area stores. In the store's final days, Owney called some regular customers directly to let them know, offered discounts to loyal patrons, and even gave one customer tips for baking pizza at home before the doors closed. Owney is now looking for another job, the same report notes.
Why Short Notice Was Legal
The abrupt timeline drew concern from some, but the closure did not violate labor law. Federal and Texas WARN Act rules require 60 days of advance written notice only when an employer has 100 or more full-time workers and lays off 50 or more employees at a single site, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. With only four employees on staff, the Texarkana store fell well outside those thresholds, leaving the two-to-three-day notice period entirely within the law.
A National Pullback by Papa Murphy's Parent Company
The Texarkana closure lands amid a much larger contraction at Papa Murphy's parent company, MTY Food Group. The Canada-based company, headquartered in Saint-Laurent, Quebec, announced in July that it would close 68 underperforming corporate-owned restaurants over six to nine months, with up to 50 of those closures expected to be Papa Murphy's locations. During MTY's Q2 2026 earnings call, CEO Eric Lefebvre said the stores selected for closure had lost a combined $10 million over the previous 12 months, according to FOX 4 Dallas-Fort Worth. MTY had repossessed three clusters of corporate stores two years earlier in an attempt to turn them around before ultimately deciding to shut them down after profitability failed to return.
MTY, which also operates brands like Cold Stone Creamery, Wetzel's Pretzels, and Blimpie across more than 7,000 outlets worldwide, acquired Papa Murphy's in May 2019 for roughly $190 million, according to Fasken. MTY's CFO has said the closures are meant to protect corporate segment margins after they dropped to 9% in the second quarter, and the company estimates total lease termination and closure costs across its brand portfolio will run between $10 million and $12 million CAD, as reported by Nation's Restaurant News. Papa Murphy's store count nationwide fell from 1,168 restaurants in 2023 to 1,014 in 2025, and the chain now operates in nearly 40 states.
Pizza's Rough Year Across the Industry
Papa Murphy's troubles are not unique. U.S. quick-service pizza sales declined 0.3% in 2025, making pizza the only major limited-service restaurant category to post negative growth for the year, per Technomic data reported by the same trade publication. Papa Murphy's own system sales dropped 3.0% in 2025, while competitors fared worse — Pizza Hut fell 8.2% and MOD Pizza dropped 10.6%, with six of the top 10 U.S. pizza chains posting negative growth overall.
Other major pizza brands are cutting back too. Papa Johns plans to shutter roughly 300 stores by the end of 2027, while Pizza Hut announced it would close 250 underperforming U.S. locations in the first half of 2026, citing rising operating costs and shifting consumer spending. Industry researchers point to the rise of third-party delivery apps like DoorDash and Uber Eats as a key factor, since they have eroded pizza's traditional home-delivery advantage by making delivery available across nearly every restaurant category.
Papa Murphy's, founded in the Pacific Northwest in 1981, built its business on a take-and-bake model where fresh pizzas are prepared in-store for customers to finish baking at home. To manage rising real estate and operating costs, the company has also been testing co-branded storefronts this year, including a shared space inside a Famous Dave's that assigned about a quarter of the barbecue restaurant's dining room to a Papa Murphy's takeout counter.
For now, it remains unclear whether another franchisee will step in to take over the Richmond Road lease or whether the corridor will simply absorb another retail vacancy, a question Texarkana Today notes remains open for the community to watch.
