Bravo Italian Kitchen closes several restaurants
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Bravo is down to 14 locations.Photo: Shutterstock
Italian casual-dining chains Bravo Italian Kitchen and Brio Italian Grille have closed a number of locations in recent days and months.
At least four Bravo locations have closed in the past week, in West Chester and Dayton, Ohio; Mount Lebanon, Pennsylvania; and West Des Moines, Iowa, according to local media reports. Calls to three of the four restaurants were answered by an automated message saying they are closed. The status of the Pennsylvania location could not be independently confirmed.
The chain is down to 14 units, according to its website, from 20 at the end of last year, per Technomic.
The Bravo closures follow a handful of Brio closures earlier this year. Local media outlets reported closures in Cherry Hill, Freehold, and Marlton, New Jersey; Naples and Orlando, Florida; and Allen, Texas. Phone calls to all six locations confirmed they are closed.
Brio’s website now lists 16 locations, down from the 22 tallied by Technomic at the end of 2025.
A representative for the brands had not responded to a request for comment as of publication time.
The closures come after the chains’ bankruptcy filing last year and continue years of retrenchment for both brands.
Parent company Bravo Brio Restaurant Group filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in August 2025. It blamed macroeconomic factors and declining demand for casual dining and said it planned to close underperforming locations.
It was the brands’ second bankruptcy, following a filing in 2020 by then-owner FoodFirst Corp.
Last October, Bravo and Brio received a strategic investment from R&R Brands, a new multibrand restaurant group led by former Walk-On’s President Scott Taylor. As part of the investment, R&R also took over management of the brands from Earl Enterprises with plans to revitalize them.
Bravo was founded in 1992 in Columbus, Ohio, by restaurateurs Chris and Rick Doody. They later developed Brio as a more upscale sister concept. The company went public in 2010 and peaked at 115 locations total in 2015, per Technomic data.
The chains have been shrinking ever since, and were particularly hard hit by the pandemic. Since 2020, systemwide sales have declined 22% at Bravo and 26% at Brio, according to Technomic, with much of the decline driven by unit closures.
Bravo and Brio are among a number of full-service chains to close locations this year, including On the Border, O’Charley’s, and Red Lobster.
