Cracker Barrel is leaving the Portland area and Central Oregon. The restaurant chain closed their Beaverton, Tualatin, and Bend locations on Monday, citing the pandemic as the reason to shutter the country-themed restaurants.
In a statement to KATU News, the Tennessee-based business says they made the difficult decision to close three of the four Oregon locations.
“As a standard course of business, we continually evaluate the performance of our stores, using various criteria to ensure we are meeting the needs of our guests and our business. With that, we are saddened that we have been unable to overcome the impact the pandemic had on our business and have made the difficult decision to close the Beaverton, Tualatin, and Bend locations. The decision to close a store is never one we take lightly, and our focus right now is in assisting our impacted employees during this transition. We extend our sincere thanks to our employees who worked so hard to keep our fireplace glowing and to the guests who have dined with us, celebrated with us, and made us part of their community. We look forward to reconnecting with them at other times at nearby Cracker Barrels in the future.”
Callers to the three restaurants were greeted with the following message.
“To our (Tualatin, Beaverton, Bend) community, we are deeply saddened to announce this location has permanently closed. We’ve been honored to welcome guests into a home away from home at our store and we valued the opportunity to be a part of so many special occasions for our guests and community. We hope will you visit any of our more than 660 Cracker Barrel locations across 45 states.”
Cracker Barrel will continue to operate a restaurant in Medford.
Six years ago, the Tualatin restaurant became the first Cracker Barrel to open on the West Coast.