Reddit Thinks The Cheesecake Factory Might Close In 2022. Here's Why

The Cheesecake Factory has been around for quite a long time. According to Eat This, Not That!, the restaurant's origins can be traced all the way back to the 1940s in Detroit. Its founder, Evelyn Overton, worked on a cheesecake recipe that she stumbled across in a newspaper, and her creation became rather popular among those who tried it. She briefly ran a bakery from her basement for a while to sell her goods, before giving it up and deciding to focus on her family life.  

By 1972, Overton eventually opened a bakery again in Los Angeles and called it The Cheesecake Factory Bakery and offered as many as 20 different types of cheesecake to her customers. From the beginning, the brand was destined to be a hit, and it has since grown at an impressive rate over the years, with hundreds of locations across the U.S. as well as in other countries as of today.

However, The Cheesecake Factory may be nearing its end, if you believe the opinion of some Redditors. In a new thread, Reddit users have discussed why the brand is not as strong as it once was, with one person writing that they believe the brand will soon shut down, offering several reasons why. For one, they say, the restaurant has an unnecessarily complex menu with too many similar items. They add that it doesn't help that the chain often tends to stake a spot in mall settings that have largely been abandoned due to high real estate prices. As they concluded in the thread, "This will be the next chain to close." But are they right?

Redditors are genuinely wondering whether The Cheesecake Factory has what it takes to survive in today's cutthroat market. As they conjecture in a new thread, The Cheesecake Factory is currently struggling to ensure that its staff members are paid adequate wages. The original poster shares internal (and probably confidential) e-mails from the corporation behind the restaurant that shows an interesting plan for fourth quarter payouts this year. 

"What's interesting here is that the executive team has decided to adjust their Q4 bonus plan for the entire corporate and restaurant manager teams, clearly stating that they can't sustain a sharp jump in wages going forward, and focus on 'wage management' and staff retention so they can make more money," they say in the thread, adding, "It absolutely drives me nuts that 'as a leader in their industry,' they can't offer to pay up new hires a living wage and think it wouldn't create staff retention by doing so."

One of the commenters mentioned that brands like The Cheesecake Factory aren't going to survive for extended periods and explained why. As they wrote, "Restaurants that are trying to present a large variety of menu items, like Cheesecake Factory, are going to flounder in this market." As far as they're concerned, if a brand wants to survive, it's important to have a menu that's streamlined, along with a smaller number of staff members, early closing times, and other cost-effective measures. They added, "Large corporations are not going to be able to accept compartmentalizing like this, and we'll see it in the market soon."