Anyone who’s watched (regular) television in California can likely belt out the catchy “Grocery Outlet, Bargain Market” jingle by heart. Unfortunately, the Emeryville-based supermarket chain doesn’t have much to sing about these days.

Grocery Outlet is slated to close nine locations in Southern and Central California in 2026, as part of a broad retrenchment that will see dozens of locations close across the country. For California consumers, the markets affected can mostly be found in Los Angeles, San Diego and Orange counties, as well as areas farther north like Kern and Fresno counties.

The specific cities affected by the coming Grocery Outlet closures are: Azusa, Brawley, El Cajon, Kerman, La Habra, Ontario, Patterson, Poway and Ridgecrest. The company’s larger “optimization plan” was first announced in the chain’s fourth quarter and 2025 fiscal year report.

The report said that the plan “provides for the closure of 36 financially underperforming stores, including the termination or sublease of the applicable store leases, the termination or sublease of a lease for a distribution center facility that we are no longer utilizing, and the termination of operator agreements with independent operators (‘IOs’) for the applicable store locations as well as certain other store locations.” The report also stated that the company’s operating loss for the year was $221.7 million.

Grocery Outlet acknowledged that it may have grown too quickly in recent years, necessitating these closures (which also affect stores in Idaho, Maryland, New Jersey, Ohio and Pennsylvania).

“Following a rigorous analysis of the fleet, we identified 36 stores in the network that we concluded did not have a viable path to sustained profitability,” Grocery Outlet CEO Jason Potter said in the company’s latest earnings call, according to the Los Angeles Times. “It’s clear now that we expanded too quickly, and these closures are a direct correction.”

Grocery Outlet currently operates more than 560 stores in 16 states. Its closures come as other supermarket brands are struggling: Kroger (the parent company of Ralphs and Food 4 Less) and Albertsons also closed several locations and laid off hundreds of employees last year. Amazon, meanwhile, is going all in on grocery delivery, shuttering all of its Amazon Fresh and Amazon Go stores nationwide as of early 2026 and converting some of them into Whole Foods Market locations.

SFGATE reached out to Grocery Outlet but did not hear back before the time of publication.