Bloomin' Brands closed 21 underperforming Outback Steakhouse restaurants last week and has identified 22 more locations where it will not renew the lease, sharpening a turnaround that is now cutting into the chain's footprint. The company said most of those lease expirations will land over the next four years.

The outback closing search is landing now because the reduction is not a one-off cleanup. It is part of a broader reset for a 38-year-old chain that has been losing ground for years as menu execution slipped and fewer customers came back. Outback Steakhouse has also lost share to Texas Roadhouse and LongHorn Steakhouse, a sign that the problem is not just traffic, but the brand's ability to keep up with competitors on the table and on the value guest expects.

Eric Christel said Bloomin' Brands completed a detailed review of its restaurant base, then closed the 21 weaker stores and mapped out the 22 leases it will let roll off. He said the company wants to focus its resources on the remaining healthier restaurants. That matters because the closures are spread across the chain's future, not packed into a single quarter, which means the shrinkage will keep showing up in the business for years instead of disappearing after one announcement.

The harder part for Outback is that the company is trying to repair the brand while pruning it. Michael Spanos said the strategy rests on four platforms: deliver a remarkable dine-in experience, drive brand relevancy, reignite a culture of ownership and fun, and invest in restaurants. Roland Ornelas has framed the same challenge in simpler terms, saying the lifeblood of the restaurant business is new items and that a chain has to win on value while also taking customers from rivals. That is the friction inside the turnaround: Outback is closing restaurants because some are not working, even as leadership says the fix is to make the surviving ones better at pulling people back in.

What comes next is a long unwind of those 22 leases, most of them over the next four years, while Bloomin' Brands tries to prove the trimmed-down Outback can hold onto customers it has been losing. If the remaining restaurants do not show better traffic and stronger repeat visits, the closures will look less like a reset and more like the beginning of a smaller chain.