Boston Market Has Shrunk To Just A Handful Of States. What Happened?

For children of the 90s Boston Market always seemed like a beacon of homestyle cooking amid a sea of cheap burgers, but that reputation hasn't saved the chain from collapsing in recent years. Founded in 1985 as Boston Chicken in the Massachusetts village of Newtonville, the restaurant was imagined as a healthy, higher-end alternative to normal fast food. In some ways it was on the leading edge of "fast casual" dining, offering something closer to home cooked food but with the speed and prices of fast food. After exploding during the 1990s Boston Market peaked at around 1,200 locations nationwide, which is why it's so shocking to find out that there are only 16ish locations left. Maybe.

The reason for the confusion is because Boston Market is in such dire straits, even its location finder on its website isn't working anymore. Search for one near you and you'll get a list of stores which have all been permanently shuttered. But that mismanagement hints at what killed Boston Market: massive corporate mismanagement.

Despite struggling for years the chain was purchased by a new owner Jay Pandya in 2020, when it still had over 300 locations. The next year Boston Market began rapidly expanding and experimenting with new menu items, but things went south quickly. Within a year of the sale employees and vendors of Boston Market began suing the company for unpaid wages and bills. Things got so bad New Jersey actually closed Boston Market locations over worker's rights violations.

Certainly Boston Market was in trouble long before current ownership took over. Despite peaking in the 90s, the chain was already suffering after grocery stores started offering their own rotisserie chickens, which is Boston Market's signature product. It first filed for bankruptcy in 1998, and was purchased by McDonald's in 2000, before being sold again to a private equity firm in 2007. During that time almost half the locations closed. As new chains like Chipotle and Panera started competing with Boston Market the company simply failed to innovate, and by the 2010s it felt decidedly old fashioned, but with no real charm either.

On the heels of the wave of lawsuits against the company, Boston Market has closed 95% of its remaining locations since 2022, often shutting down units without even notifying employees. All the while Pandya has repeatedly tried to escape liability by declaring bankruptcy, although those efforts have been rejected by courts. There have been strange signs of life, including a new franchise location opening in Buffalo, and another spinoff called "Boston Chicken" in India, with the company's plan seemingly being to sell the name to anyone willing to fork over cash for a recognizable brand name. It all reads as a desperate attempt to cash out, and at this point Boston Market may only survive as a purveyor of mediocre frozen meals, if it survives at all.