A MOD Pizza store in Reston, Virginia, will close down on September 30 after a decade in business, according to FFX Now. It’s just the latest MOD location to shutter in Northern Virginia over the past couple of years.
In fact, the fast-casual chain’s footprint has been gradually shrinking in several southern states.
Along with the Reston closure, MOD’s Ashburn, Virginia store shut its doors for good in January, also after 10 years. That was followed by the closure of an eight-year-old location near Chantilly, Virginia, in February. (In the latter case, the restaurant’s landlord had reportedly opted not to renew its lease, as FFX Now reported at the time.) Additionally, a MOD store in Vienna, Virginia, closed in April 2025, preceded by a closure in Herndon about a year before that. The company’s website still lists a total of 13 locations in Virginia.
Owensboro, Kentucky, lost a MOD store in April. In that case, even the GM didn’t know it was coming until he showed up for work on a Wednesday morning and learned he no longer had a job. Additionally, three MOD stores closed shop in the Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, area in March. In a statement to the Sun News, MOD said the decision was “the right step for the longevity of the brand. It also presents an opportunity for MOD Pizza to refocus, adapt and emerge stronger than ever.”
MOD does reportedly have new stores coming soon to Sacramento, California, and a location opened in Cibolo, Texas, in May 2024.
MOD Pizza was once the fastest-growing restaurant concept in the U.S. and the fast-casual darling of the pizza industry. It fell on hard times during the pandemic, however, and considered filing for bankruptcy before being acquired in 2024 by Elite Restaurant Group, which specializes in turning restaurant brands around.
Fast-casual pizza just isn’t what it used to be, thanks to the affordability crisis, a saturated pizza market, and, to top it all off, more Americans working from home and eating out for lunch less often since the pandemic. California-based Pieology filed for bankruptcy in November and has been reduced to just 45 locations after mushrooming to 150 stores as of 2017. Not long after MOD Pizza was acquired last year, fast-casual brand Oath Pizza also filed for bankruptcy, as did Arizona-based Fired Pie.
