Tex-Mex chain, On the Border, has gone dark almost everywhere.
The shutdown landed just over a year after Pappas Restaurants rescued the company from bankruptcy.
In a recent statement, OTB Hospitality, the operating entity for the chain, announced that every company-owned location is now closed, following what it described as ‘a thorough evaluation of the business.’
“We are currently evaluating the future of the On The Border brand and exploring a range of strategic options,” the company added.
What 44 years of history looks like in retreat
In the latest round of closures, 27 restaurants went dark, leaving just five U.S. franchise locations in South Dakota, Florida, Nevada, and California, along with at least one franchised spot still operating in South Korea.
Rewind the timeline, and the collapse looks almost dizzying. When Pappas Restaurants acquired the Dallas-based chain out of bankruptcy in March of last year, On the Border had just 80 restaurants to its name after shuttering 77 underperforming stores in the run-up to the filing.
By the end of 2025, Technomic reported that the count had fallen to 57. For a brand that’s been around since 1982, this is a heavy fall in a short window. The original restaurant opened in Dallas and built a name on fajitas, margaritas, and guacamole.
Brinker International, the company behind Chili’s, picked it up in 1994 and rode it through the early 2000s expansion that took the chain to 166 locations at its 2007 peak. Then came a string of ownership changes with Golden Gate Capital buying the company in 2010, followed by Argonne Capital Group, an Atlanta investment firm, which took it on in 2014.
The brand’s troubles had started long before Pappas stepped in to save the day, with sales persistently falling since 2008 and closures piling up in 2024 and 2025. Last year alone, sales dropped nearly 33 percent while the unit count was cut by 42 percent. Even with all that, the company was still the fifth-largest Mexican casual-dining chain in the country, pulling in 152 million dollars in total sales.
Pappas, for its part, runs about 90 restaurants across a handful of other brands. Pappasito’s Cantina, Pappadeaux Seafood Kitchen, Pappas Bar-B-Q. Most of them clustered in Texas. When the company took On the Border on, it talked about modernizing the restaurants and reworking the menu and operations.
That plan now appears to have been overtaken by reality. After the closure announcement was made, Pappas said that it would share more about what’s next for the brand in the next few weeks.
Sources: OTB, PR Newswire, Verita, NRN, OBT Bankruptcy Release