LA’s restaurant and bar apocalypse as 300-plus spots close this year over red tape and insane bills

It’s last call across Los Angeles as hundreds of dining destinations have shuttered so far this year — blaming everything from skyrocketing minimum wage and insurance costs to endless red tape.

From legacy Beverly Hills dining rooms and legendary Sunset Strip hangouts to beloved neighborhood dive bars and pillars of the craft cocktail scene, the city is undergoing a hospitality bloodbath.

At least 301 restaurants, bars and cafes have closed in LA alone since the beginning of 2026, according to a California Post analysis of city data published Oct. 16. That’s a staggering 25% more than the 241 recorded closures in all of 2025.

The figures cover businesses within LA city limits, meaning the carnage across the broader county and in neighboring hot spots like Beverly Hills and West Hollywood aren’t counted in the true total.

Among the high-profile losses are Sushiya, Crustacean, Pineapple Hill Saloon, Sycamore Kitchen, Connie and Ted’s, Everson Royce Bar, The Misfit, Employees Only and The Belmont — all familiar names to scores of Angelenos.

For Tom Sopit, managing partner of West Hollywood cocktail mecca Employees Only, which shuttered in September after eight years, the decision to close came after what he described as a “death by a thousand cuts.”

“From 2021 to 2025, our liability insurance premium increased by 120 percent,” Sopit told the California Post, adding that state regulators have some control over rates. “That’s before anyone steps through the doors. That’s before anything even happens.”

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He also pointed to West Hollywood’s $20.25-per-hour minimum wage and paid time-off requirements, as well as the exodus of entertainment industry jobs.

Even though the cocktail bar and restaurant remained busy, guests were spending less while the cost of doing business continued to climb.

“We couldn’t just keep passing everything along to the guests,” Sopit said. “They’re thinking, “Why is this cocktail $25? That’s insane. And I’m with them.”

The final straw was the prospect of making such deep cuts to the business that the quality and service at Employees Only would suffer. “I’d rather die standing on my feet than on my knees,” he said. “I wasn’t willing to do that.”

Even the famously moneyed streets of Beverly Hills haven’t been spared.

Crustacean, the high-end institution known for its celeb sightings and aquarium walkway, left its longtime location after three decades. After a new landlord took over amid rising costs of doing business in the county, the restaurant closed permanently on Oct. 31.

The pain is especially acute in LA’s neighborhood bar scene, where longtime watering holes are increasingly being squeezed.

Pineapple Hill Saloon, the beloved Sherman Oaks sports dive bar that became a flashpoint in the debate over pandemic restrictions, is among the recognizable names in the latest wave of closures.

A strip-mall standby since 1978 — earning an official designation as a City of Los Angeles Legacy Business — Pineapple Hill was hit with a sudden 60-day notice to vacate on Aug. 6 as part of a sweeping redevelopment of the site.

It has managed to keep the lights on through November as part of a last-ditch effort.

“Unless you’re a high-end restaurant that caters to the very wealthy, how is anybody going to survive?” Pineapple Hill owner Angela Marsden told The Post.

Downtown LA’s Everson Royce Bar, better known as ERB, also called it quits after 11 years, with the Arts District drinkery delivering a blistering assessment of what it sees as the city’s hostile business climate.

“If it wasn’t for our staff ERB would have already been one of the hundreds and hundreds if not thousands and thousands of restaurant / bar / nightlife casualties in this disturbingly difficult place to do business in: Los Angeles,” the establishment wrote in a farewell Instagram post.

Even critical acclaim couldn’t save downtown LA Italian restaurant Rossoblu, which closed Nov. 1 after nearly a decade of serving handmade pastas.

Owners Steve and Dina Samson told the LA Times that their expiring lease, skyrocketing costs for goods and services, and inconsistent customer traffic made running the restaurant increasingly untenable. Business in 2026 had been “brutally slow,” Steve said, while years of financial stress had taken a toll on the couple’s physical and mental health.

For many owners, the math simply doesn’t add up anymore. After factoring in soaring utility bills and inflation, operating margins are being erased and restauranteurs struggling to stay afloat.

“This city is not friendly to small businesses,” Tricia La Belle, president of the Greater Los Angeles Restaurant Association, told The Post.

The 30-year hospitality industry veteran, who owns Bon Vivant Market & Cafe in Glendale and four other restaurants across LA, said soaring labor costs are “killing the industry.” She pointed to LA’s minimum wage of $18.42, implemented on July 1, as just one of the mounting expenses hammering restaurant operators.

Between the high cost of labor, ballooning utility bills, and what she described as miles of red tape, La Belle said she’s considering closing all of her eateries and leaving the Golden State entirely.

“I’d like out of the state of California, we are in one of the worst years,” La Belle said.

The longtime restauranteur said conditions have become so dire that she’s stopped taking a salary from her own businesses, instead relying on her husband’s income to keep them afloat.

“It’s painful to hear of these closures. Very painful. People put their lives, their money, everything on the risk to open these places that create so much,” she said.

The consequences extend far beyond the loss of a place to grab dinner or drinks.

“When you start shuttering restaurants and you don’t have retail, what’s going to happen to all these strip malls?” La Belle asked. “They’re just going to become havens for more homeless. Our communities are losing the backbone of what makes them viable and what makes them safe.”

The crisis is rippling well beyond the dining room, hitting architects, designers and contractors whose livelihoods depend on restaurants.

Eddie Navarrette, a restaurant architect who owns hospitality construction company FE Design & Consulting, said he’s had to cut his staff to a third of its pre-pandemic size.

“We just don’t have the same demand,” Navarrette told The Post. Businesses are instead looking for smaller improvements “based on survival” rather than complicated buildouts.

Those willing to take a gamble on opening in LA are often outsiders who don’t realize what they’re getting into until it’s too late.

“The only investment we’re seeing are from international restaurant groups that are coming here that don’t really understand how cumbersome it is to open up a restaurant here, how expensive it is,” Navarrette said. “They have a reality check once they start getting into it and the lease is already signed.”

For some restaurants, the struggle isn’t just about attracting customers or paying the bills — it’s about navigating City Hall.

In Mar Vista, the wildly popular Beethoven Market has become a cautionary tale of how quickly a promising new restaurant can find itself fighting for survival. Less than a year after opening, the neighborhood hot spot lost its liquor license in December 2025 following a wave of complaints from neighbors about parking and noise.

Owner Jeremy Adler, a third-generation Angeleno, applied for a full liquor license in May but is still operating without serving booze, caught up in LA’s notoriously slow bureaucratic process.

“So many times there’s a piece of paper sitting on a desk somewhere, and it just slows everything down,” he told The Post, adding he’s had to hire attorneys and consultants to help him navigate the “bureaucracy.”

“The process is lengthy, it’s expensive, it’s cumbersome. I don’t think I’m an unintelligent person, but this process has made me feel like a dummy.”

While the restaurant pivoted and began offering a suite of non-alcoholic beverages, business has never been the same.

“I’m losing money right now. Without liquor, the business doesn’t make sense. But I care about the people that work here,” Adler said. “You can only lose money for so long.”

Last week, outgoing LA Mayor Karen Bass, signed an executive directive to “cut red tape” for city businesses.

The directive created a self-certification program for outdoor dining, established in-person office hours at City BusinessSource Centers, and directed city departments to create funding for a restaurant grant program. 

“When our restaurants succeed, our neighborhoods succeed. They create jobs, support families, and bring people together,” Bass said in a press release. “I’m proud to sign this new executive directive to make it easier for restaurants to open, grow and succeed in Los Angeles.”

The mayor also acknowledged the turmoil the industry is under.

“Restaurants are facing significant challenges. Rising costs of food, labor, insurance, rent, utilities, and construction have placed increasing pressure on restaurant operators,” the directive reads. “Opening, expanding, and maintaining a restaurant can require navigating multiple City departments, applications, fees, inspections, and burdensome regulatory processes.”

The California Post contacted Mayor-elect Nithya Raman for comment.