True Food Kitchen Kept All Six Texas Stores. Their Bars Have Trailed the Prior Year 43 Months Running.

The filing

True Food Kitchen's parent, FRC Balance LLC, filed for Chapter 11 on Oct. 4 in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Texas, before Judge Christopher Lopez. The chain served its last meals at 12 restaurants that day, in California, Illinois, Maryland, Louisiana, New York, Virginia, Ohio, New Jersey and Florida. Thirty-four remain in 14 states. Six of them are in Texas, and none of the Texas stores closed.

The company has about $42.1 million in funded debt, according to the declaration of its chief restructuring officer, Nathan Cook of Teneo. HumanCo, the investment firm led by Jason Karp and the largest holder on the company's ownership statement, has agreed through HumanCo TFK IV to lend up to $20 million to fund the case, subject to court approval. The proposed bidding procedures would let it bid with its debt. The proposed schedule, which the court has not yet approved, sets a bid deadline of Dec. 10, an auction on Dec. 15 and a sale hearing on Dec. 21.

Cook's declaration gives the company's own account of what went wrong. "The Company experienced significant management turnover, which resulted in frequent changes to expansion strategy, brand direction, and menu offerings," it says. Successive teams "invested capital outside its core market areas and in new product lines and restaurant concepts that were ultimately unsuccessful." It also says "many of the Restaurants are profitable and occupy highly desirable locations," while others saw "steady decreases in profitability over time."

Oprah Winfrey bought a stake in 2018 and joined the board, CNBC reported at the time. Quartz reports she still holds a minority stake and no longer sits on the board.

Texas kept its stores. The bars kept shrinking.

True Food came to Texas in November 2013 at Preston Center in Dallas, its seventh restaurant anywhere, according to CultureMap. Houston's BLVD Place store followed in 2014, then downtown Austin's Seaholm district in 2016, Legacy West in Plano in 2017, The Woodlands in 2018 and the Domain in north Austin in early 2019. All six bars report under one Texas company, True Food Beverages LLC, which is itself one of the nine debtors.

Together they reported $3.95 million in beverage revenue in 2022. In 2025 they reported $1.91 million.

| Store | 2022 | 2025 | Change | |---|---|---|---| | Austin, Seaholm | $866,980 | $329,315 | -62.0% | | Austin, Domain | $900,527 | $387,485 | -57.0% | | Houston, BLVD Place | $299,028 | $138,929 | -53.5% | | The Woodlands | $535,769 | $276,679 | -48.4% | | Plano, Legacy West | $741,910 | $427,907 | -42.3% | | Dallas, Preston Center | $602,776 | $353,091 | -41.4% | | Six stores | $3,946,990 | $1,913,406 | -51.5% |

No single store drives the result. Drop any one and the other five fall between 48.6% and 53.7%.

The 11,218 Texas venues that reported positive beverage revenue in every month of 2022 and 2025 fell 6.7% over the same period.

The trade areas fell too, by far less

The obvious objection is real estate. Cook's declaration says some restaurants were "impacted by changing market forces and demographics."

So we drew a drive-time trade area around each store, the area reachable in 10 minutes by road at typical speeds, then took every beverage permit holder inside it that reported in every month of 2022 and 2025. That's 962 venues across the six trade areas. Together they fell 12.1%. That is nearly twice the Texas decline, so these markets were softer than the state. True Food fell 51.5%.

| Store | True Food | 10-minute trade area | Gap (points) | Venues (n) | |---|---|---|---|---| | Austin, Seaholm | -62.0% | -12.3% | 49.7 | 262 | | Austin, Domain | -57.0% | -13.9% | 43.1 | 110 | | Dallas, Preston Center | -41.4% | -2.0% | 39.4 | 119 | | Houston, BLVD Place | -53.5% | -14.4% | 39.1 | 215 | | The Woodlands | -48.4% | -10.4% | 38.0 | 86 | | Plano, Legacy West | -42.3% | -14.6% | 27.7 | 178 |

Seaholm is the widest gap. The 262 venues within a 10-minute drive of the downtown Austin store lost 12.3%. True Food lost 62%. Preston Center's trade area came closest to flat, down 2.0%, while the store in the middle of it lost 41.4%.

The result doesn't depend on where the line is drawn. At five minutes (15 to 80 venues per area) and at 15 (129 to 619), all 12 of those trade areas beat the True Food at their center by more than 21 points. No single venue moves any 10-minute trade area by more than 2.7 points.

This year the gap is narrower but still there. From January through August, the 10-minute trade areas ran between minus 5.4% and plus 1.3% (1,298 same-store venues pooled, down 2.7%). The six stores ran between minus 12.5% and minus 26.0%.

Softer local markets account for about 5 points of True Food's 45-point shortfall against Texas. A drive-time trade area can't speak to problems specific to a center or a lease.

Forty-three months

The six stores last reported more than the same month a year earlier in January 2023. Every month from February 2023 through August 2026 came in lower, 43 in a row. January 2023's 4.0% gain came against a January 2022 hit by Omicron, and revenue was down in each month from July through December 2022.

The streak started the month before John Williams took over as CEO. It ran through his tenure and an interim CEO, and it includes July and August, the first two monthly reports since Jeff Chandler was named CEO in late July.

January through August 2026 totals $1.10 million, down 18.1% from the same months of 2025 and 60.1% from 2022. Every store is down this year, between 12.5% and 26.0%.

Company counsel also cited this year's cyclospora outbreak at the first-day hearing, according to Bondoro. The Texas decline predates it by three years. June through August ran 15.7% below last year, against 19.3% for January through May.

The Hopdoddy comparison

Chandler ran Hopdoddy, the Austin burger chain, for ten years before True Food hired him. Hopdoddy's Texas bars, measured the same way, went from $6.28 million in 2022 to $7.08 million in 2025 across 22 stores, up 12.6%. Eighteen of the 22 grew.

The two chains sell different food at different checks. It shows what the bars did at the chain he ran. What he does at True Food is still ahead.

The peer set

True Food had the steepest fall of the upscale-casual and daytime brands we track in Texas.

| Brand | Stores | 2022 to 2025 | Jan-Aug 2026 vs 2025 | |---|---|---|---| | True Food Kitchen | 6 / 6 | -51.5% | -18.1% | | Snooze | 18 / 24 | -48.6% | -4.8% | | Kona Grill | 4 / 3 | -34.5% | -2.7% | | First Watch | 53 / 68 | -26.0% | -13.7% | | North Italia | 6 / 9 | -14.0% | -5.0% | | The Cheesecake Factory | 17 / 19 | -13.8% | +4.1% | | Seasons 52 | 2 / 3 | -11.4% | +0.7% | | Yard House | 9 / 9 | -7.6% | +8.6% | | Hopdoddy | 22 / 30 | +12.6% | -0.9% |

Store counts are for each window. Snooze is the only brand close on the three-year number, and it has nearly stopped falling this year.

In 2025 a True Food in Texas reported about $319,000 in beverage revenue. A North Italia reported $1.87 million and a Cheesecake Factory $841,000.

Where the prices sit

On the Domain store's spring menu, eight cocktails ran from $14.50 for the espresso martini to $18.75 for the Smoke Show Old Fashioned, a $16.10 median. North Italia's Texas cocktails sat at a $13 median (4 drinks), Kona Grill's at $15 (13) and Culinary Dropout's at $15 (2), on menus from October 2025 on.

What a buyer is looking at

The bar is a small piece of a True Food. Technomic estimated 2025 sales at $312 million across 45 restaurants, about $6.9 million each. A Texas store's $319,000 is about 4.6% of that.

It's also the one line of a True Food's business that anyone outside the company can see, store by store, every month. If the sale goes through as proposed, the buyer chooses which leases to take. The six Texas ones come with bars that have trailed the prior year for three and a half years.

Sources: Texas beverage tax receipts, monthly reported beverage revenue for the six True Food Kitchen permits filed by True Food Beverages LLC, January 2019 through August 2026. Same-store comparisons count a venue only if it reported positive revenue in every month of both windows; Texas benchmark n=11,218. Trade areas are 10-minute drive-time polygons from each store at typical road speeds, without live traffic (5 and 15 minutes as checks), covering every beverage permit holder inside them that meets the same rule; 10-minute n=962 for 2022 to 2025 and 1,298 for Jan-Aug 2026, with 8 venues shared by the two Austin areas counted once. Menu prices from Pourcast menu pricing data, Domain store, April 2026. Filing details from the Cook declaration (Dkt. 22, paras. 21 to 25), the DIP and bidding procedures motions, Bondoro, BankruptcyData, NRN, CNBC and Quartz.