The last Bahama Breeze in Georgia will serve its final customers on Saturday in Kennesaw, and the site at 755 Earnest W Barrett Pkwy NW is set to become a Cheddar's Scratch Kitchen. The closure ends the brand’s run in the state and puts a local marker on Darden Restaurants’ broader retreat from Bahama Breeze.
For people in Kennesaw, the change lands now because the final day of operation is Saturday, with construction teams due to start converting the building on Sept. 23. The same company that is closing the restaurant also says the conversion is part of a wider plan to reshape the 28-location chain over the next 12 to 18 months.
Bahama Breeze had already disappeared from Duluth before this week, leaving the Kennesaw location as the last one in Georgia. Darden announced in February that it had been weighing strategic options for the chain and had concluded the brand was no longer a strategic priority. That judgment is plain enough: the brand is being reduced, but not everywhere in the same way.
Instead of shutting every remaining location outright, Darden has chosen two paths. It previously set 14 Bahama Breeze spots for complete closure and targeted 14 others for conversion into different corporate brands, including the Kennesaw site. The company says it expects the process to be finished without a material impact on financial results.
That split underscores the practical contradiction in the plan. Bahama Breeze is being treated as a brand with no clear future on its own, yet some restaurants are still valuable enough to keep as part of the portfolio under another name. Darden also said it would place as many employees as possible into roles across its portfolio, but it has not confirmed how many local workers accepted transfers.
What happens next is already set in motion: the Kennesaw restaurant closes Saturday, the building begins its conversion on Sept. 23, and the broader transformation of the chain is expected to continue for 12 to 18 months. For Georgia, the change is final. There will be no Bahama Breeze left in the state.
