A 114-year-old bakery chain is closing 19 stores — while a donut startup opens its third

Two bakery stories broke within days of each other this month, and together they tell you everything about where American baking is headed. One chain that outlasted two world wars is closing nearly 20 stores. A donut concept that didn't exist a few years ago just opened its third location in a market it's never operated in before. Neither headline is really about donuts or bread. Both are about who figured out what the customer actually wants in 2026.

The old guard is thinning out

Sayers the Bakers — a UK institution that's been baking for 114 years — is closing 19 underperforming locations at the end of August, alongside job cuts. It's not alone. A cookie chain that spent two decades building out retail closed every single storefront it had, choosing to survive as something else entirely rather than keep paying rent on stores nobody was walking into.

Locally, the pattern repeats at a smaller scale: The Holy Donut closed its Brunswick, Maine location on August 23 after two years there, and Doce Donuts announced it's shutting its Bellevue, Washington shop. None of these are necessarily struggling brands going under entirely — most are trimming the locations that never found their footing, while keeping the ones that work.

Meanwhile, the new guard is expanding on purpose

Parlor Doughnuts, an Indiana-based concept known for its layered doughnut and savory menu items like buffalo chicken doughnut sandwiches, just opened its first Dallas-proper location on Henderson Avenue — a deliberate move into a new metro, not a defensive retrenchment. Up in the Twin Cities, Uffda Donuts is doing something almost poetic: taking over the former Hans' Bakery space for its third location, opening a new chapter in a spot that used to belong to an older-guard bakery.

Neither of these openings is an accident. Both concepts built a menu and a brand around something specific — a layered doughnut here, a regional identity there — instead of trying to be the everything-bakery that Sayers and the shuttered cookie chain used to be.

Why "everything bakery" stopped working

The bakeries closing in 2026 mostly share a trait: broad, undifferentiated menus built for a mall-traffic era that doesn't exist anymore. When foot traffic depended on being the bakery in a shopping center everyone walked past, you could sell a little of everything and survive on volume. When customers now seek out a specific thing — a specific doughnut, a specific sourdough, a specific vibe worth a special trip — the generalist bakery loses to the specialist every time.

That's the same dynamic reshaping coffee shops, craft breweries, and plenty of other food categories right now: fewer places trying to be all things, more places betting everything on doing one thing customers will actually drive across town for.

What it means for your Saturday morning bakery run

If your go-to spot has been around for decades and menu options have quietly shrunk, that's not necessarily decline — it could be a bakery finally cutting the items nobody bought so it can afford to keep making the ones people actually line up for. Our bakeries guide breaks down what separates a bakery worth the drive from one just filling a strip mall unit.

And if a shiny new concept just landed in your neighborhood promising something specific — a layered doughnut, a particular bagel style, a sourdough with a cult following — that specificity is exactly the strategy keeping bakeries alive in 2026. Worth the trip, worth the price, more often than the everything-bakery chains that are quietly closing their doors down the street. Our sourdough guide covers one of the specialties actually growing right now.