Editor’s note: This story has been updated with a statement from MOD Pizza.
When General Manager Matthew Slater locked up his MOD Pizza store and headed home for the night last Tuesday, he had a job he loved. The next morning, he was unemployed—and so was everyone else on his team.
He still has no idea why.
The MOD location in Owensboro, Kentucky, closed permanently on April 22 with zero notice to the staff, according to reports. In a post on Facebook, Slater said the move came as a “shock to all the staff,” adding that “myself and 20 others are left out in the dark with no jobs lined up and bills to be paid.”
The Owensboro Times said a sign posted on the pizzeria’s door that day confirmed that the store is “now permanently closed.”
Slater announced the restaurant’s abrupt closure in the Owensboro Chat group on Facebook. That post received nearly 600 reactions and almost 200 shares.
MOD Pizza, once a red-hot brand riding the fast-casual pizza wave, narrowly avoided a bankruptcy filing in July 2024 when it was acquired by Elite Restaurant Group, based in Southern California. Prior to that, it had shuttered 26 underperforming stores in 11 states and the District of Columbia.
According to Slater’s post, the Owensboro store’s sales “were up…and general guest satisfaction was up.” The post also states that “labor was up”—it’s unclear if he was referring to labor costs or the number of employees on the payroll.
Slater told the Owensboro Times that “everything was super normal” when he closed the shop on the night of Tuesday, April 21. “I got home and was sitting on the couch with my wife eating dinner. Then I got a text asking if we could come in for a meeting the next morning. That was pretty normal because we usually meet one time a week, so I didn’t think anything of it.”
He continued: “When we got there [Wednesday morning], I noticed a lot of the tools were kind of stacked together. Then he sat us down and said, ‘I hate to do this, but we’re closing permanently.’ I thought maybe it was a week or two out, but they said we weren’t even opening the doors today.”
Only Slater and one other employee were present for that meeting, which reportedly lasted less than 10 minutes. The remaining employees received a group message about the closure later in the morning. “The group chat just blew up,” he said in the Owensboro Times interview. “Everyone was like, ‘What’s happening?’ It was very, very sudden.”
Adding to Slater’s worries: In late December, he’d left behind a job at another pizza chain—where he had been employed for nine years—to take the GM role at the MOD store. He said he took the MOD job for the benefits package, which he never got to use.“We’re all shocked and saddened to be split up as we all respect and love each other’s company,” Slater wrote on Facebook. “I truly loved my time there and loved our guests. I am very disappointed in this outcome and apologize to our loyal guests who show out and love MOD….I won’t forget those happy faces and pleasant visits.”
In a statement sent to PMQ on May 1, MOD Pizza said:
“MOD Pizza has made the difficult decision to close its Owensboro, KY location after nine years of operation. The final day of business was April 21. We want to thank our Squad members for their hard work and dedication over the years. It has been a pleasure serving the Owensboro community, and we are so grateful to our loyal guests who supported us along the way.”
MOD Pizza, founded by Scott and Ally Svenson, reigned as the country’s fastest-growing restaurant chain in 2018 and 2019 and moved to No. 3 in 2020. In PMQ’s January-February 2021 cover story, Scott Svenson said the brand started out as “a crazy social experiment that would combine the best of a for-profit business with the heart of a nonprofit, whereby the more successful we were, the better and bigger social impact we would make.”
