Bed Bath & Beyond on Track to Finish Closing 200 Stores This Year

If you’re wondering why Bed Bath & Beyond is closing stores, you might be one of the customers in 19 U.S. states where the company has been reducing its footprint this year. The 37 store closures, listed below, are part of a “transformation” that Bed Bath & Beyond CEO Mark Tritton described to investors in Jan. 2022.

“Having concluded just the third quarter of our multi-year plan, we will continue to execute our strategic transformation by diagnosing and reforming our legacy business to achieve our goals,” Tritton said in a news release accompanying the company’s Q3 2021 results. “As we prepare for 2022, we look forward to operating in a normalized environment with a base of business upon which to grow.”

In July 2020, Bed Bath & Beyond announced plans to close 200 locations over the next two years. That May, the company had 1,478 stores—a tally that included 955 Bed Bath & Beyond stores and Buybuy Baby, Christmas Tree Shops, and Harmon Face Values locations—according to CNBC.

As Tritton said at the time, the closures were all about bolstering profitability. “We saw there were a number of stores dragging us down,” the CEO told CNBC. “We will continue to look at the rest of our concept doors, now that we have established the data criteria.”

It sounds like Bed Bath & Beyond is doing everything it can not to go out of business in an economy beset by COVID-19 disruptions, inflation, and supply-chain issues. By Jan. 2022, Bed Bath & Beyond had completed 170 of the 200 planned store closures and expected to close all 200 by the end of the year. “We are executing a full-scale transformation and simultaneously running a business in a highly unpredictable environment,” Tritton told investors in an earnings call at the time, reports CNBC.

As CNN Business reports, Tritton has been attempting a turnaround for the company, having left Target for Bed Bath & Beyond three years ago. Part of that turnaround includes remodeling 450 stores. In an earnings presentation in Jan. 2022, the company stated that it was on track to deliver around 130 store remodels across the U.S. and Canada during fiscal 2021.

According to Bed Bath & Beyond, these are the 37 stores that have closed or are closing so far in 2022 as part of the company’s store fleet optimization: