BUSINESS

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A popular restaurant chain known for elaborate desserts and celebrity sightings is quietly shrinking its footprint, leaving some customers with fewer nearby locations and others with none at all.

Several restaurants have closed in recent months, cutting off access to a familiar destination for diners and tourists in multiple markets. The closures come as restaurant operators contend with rising costs, changing customer traffic, and other financial pressures.

Founded in 2009, Sugar Factory is an American restaurant chain and candy shop that currently operates more than 20 locations across the U.S., in addition to international restaurants in the Bahamas, the United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain, according to its store locator.

Sugar Factory closes 5 restaurants

Sugar Factory has permanently closed at least five U.S. restaurants since early 2026, with publicly reported reasons varying by location.

The chain has shuttered restaurants in several major markets, including:

Miami, Florida: Closed at 507 Española Way in late summer after 11 years, Secret Miami confirmed.

Chicago, Illinois: Closed at 55 E Grand Avenue in late summer after 10 years, MrSouthLoop reported.

Rosemont, Illinois: Closed at 5445 Park Place in March after 12 years, according to the Daily Herald.

Jacksonville, Florida: Closed at 4910 Big Island Drive in June after three years, FirstCoast News noted.

Detroit, Michigan: Closed at 45 Monroe Street in May after four years, Detroit Free Press reported.

Why Sugar Factory is closing locations

Florida has experienced multiple Sugar Factory closures in recent years, including the Miami Beach restaurants on Lincoln Road and Alton Road, the Bayside Marketplace location in downtown Miami, and the Aventura Mall restaurant. The latest shutdowns in Jacksonville and Miami have further reduced the chain’s presence in the state. 

In 2020, entities tied to the Ocean Drive and Lincoln Road restaurants filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. In 2023, an investor filed a lawsuit against management.

The Jacksonville restaurant also faced significant regulatory problems before closing. Based on inspection records, the location had numerous health-code violations, as well as temporary shutdowns due to rodent and insect activity, FirstCoast News reported.

The Rosemont restaurant’s shutdown came amid financial difficulties and a legal dispute over its ownership, franchise agreement, and lease, the Daily Herald confirmed.

No reason has been provided for the Chicago location’s closure. Its shutdown leaves Illinois without a Sugar Factory restaurant.

The reason for the Detroit closure has also not been publicly disclosed, leaving Michigan without a Sugar Factory restaurant.

Sugar Factory closes locations nationwide.Denise Truscello / Getty Images

Restaurant closures are changing consumers’ options

Sugar Factory is not the only restaurant operator dealing with a changing business environment. Food-service companies across the U.S. have faced higher labor, food, and operating costs while trying to adapt to changing customer traffic.

Here’s some of my previous coverage of restaurant closures:

Fuzzy’s Tacos & Margs: Closed all of its remaining restaurants in the Houston area in September 2026.

The Cookie Factory: Closed all of its remaining locations in August 2026, ending a 20-year run of physical stores.

Maple Street Biscuit Company: Cracker Barrel sold the brand in July 2026, along with 35 restaurants, and closed its remaining 16 locations after previously shuttering more than a dozen.

The broader restaurant industry continues to face elevated costs. Prices for food away from home increased 3.4% in the 12 months ending August 2026, according to recent U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data.

Average hourly earnings of restaurant employees have also increased 41% from pre-pandemic levels, while wholesale food prices have risen 35%, according to the National Restaurant Association.

With those pressures continuing, 33% of restaurant operators said their business was not profitable during the first half of 2026, according to the National Restaurant Association.

Higher costs are also affecting consumers, with restaurant menu prices increasing 0.3% in both July and August 2026, according to the National Restaurant Association.

For customers in markets where Sugar Factory has closed, the shrinking footprint means traveling farther to visit the chain or losing access to it altogether.

Related: Mexican restaurant chain closes all locations in major market

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Why we love this deal

With autumn officially arriving this week, it may seem too early to start thinking about Christmas, but if you want the best holiday deals, the earlier you start shopping, the better bargains you’ll find. If you wait until the holiday season begins, which unofficially kicks off between Halloween and Thanksgiving, the most desirable decorations and gifts will usually increase in cost due to supply and demand. That’s why we want to share Walmart’s Flash deal on the Rirool Solar-Powered Christmas Lights.

The Rirool 2-Pack of Solar Christmas Lights typically costs $40, but with a limited-time deal taking 63% off, you can snag them for just $15. Half the work of putting up Christmas lights is untangling extension cords and finding outlet space, which is eliminated with this convenient solar-powered design that requires no electricity to power up each night. It’s not just the multicolored string lights that are on sale. The bright white and golden white colors are also discounted to $15, and for those who celebrate Hanukkah, there’s a two-pack in a dazzling blue shade that’s available for $22.

Rirool 2-Pack of Solar Christmas Lights, $15 (was $40) at Walmart

Courtesy of Walmart

Shop at Walmart

Why do shoppers love it?

You’ll get two pairs of Christmas lights that each measure 39 feet long with this deal. Each set comes packed with 100 LED lights, spaced under 4 inches apart, to help you create a stunning holiday display on your home’s exterior. For even more possibilities, the lights have eight lighting modes, so you can have twinkle throughout the night, stay steady on, or try out a fading glow. While the lights do have an on/off switch and a memory function that remembers the light mode settings, you don’t have to remember it each night, because when they’re flipped on, they automatically power up at dusk and turn off by dawn.

Related: Walmart has a 4-pack of solar-powered outdoor lanterns for only $40

Solar-powered outdoor lighting is always a smart choice because it won’t increase your electric bill. Solar-powered Christmas lights add another layer of convenience to the equation. If you want to add string lights to the pine trees along your driveway, you’d normally need to bring out a long extension cord to make it happen. With these solar lights, you just need a sunny spot to place the solar panel, so it can charge throughout the day. According to one shopper, “The lights do not need direct sunlight to recharge during the day, and yet they stay lit for approximately 6 hours at night.” They also reported that they “work in cloudy weather and when covered by snow.”

Details to know 

Power source: Solar.

Charging time: 6 hours.

Light length: Each set of string lights is 39 feet long.

Colors: The multicolored, bright white, and warm white lights are on sale for $15.

You can feel confident about the quality of these solar Christmas lights because over 600 shoppers have given them a perfect five-star rating. One reviewer raved, “These worked very well. It’s nice to have Christmas lights without extension cords.”

Shop more deals

Fohil Solar Snowflake String Lights, $18 (was $20) at Walmart

Daybetter Outdoor Christmas Net Lights, $25 (was $33) at Walmart

QiShi Christmas Solar String Light, $12 (was $20) at Walmart

Get a jump on your holiday decorating while the Rirool 2-Pack of Solar Christmas Lights is on sale for just $15 at Walmart. We won’t be surprised if this deal sells out, so don’t wait to add it to your cart.

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Something strange happened in Silicon Valley this September. The same executives who spent years insisting artificial intelligence was safe, manageable, and good for humanity suddenly started sounding like the people warning against it. Researchers quit their jobs to say the technology could be catastrophic, and the men building it nodded along in public.

Into that unusual moment stepped one CEO with a theory blunter than anyone else’s, and it happens to double as a pretty convenient argument for his own company. What Palantir’s Alex Karp told CNBC deserves a closer look than the headlines gave it.

Alex Karp says AI Big Tech may never IPO

The backdrop matters here. Earlier in September, a wave of current and former AI staffers went public with warnings that the technology they helped build could be catastrophic. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei followed with an essay called “We Must Pace the Frontier,” arguing AI capability had been advancing dangerously fast, and within days both Elon Musk and OpenAI’s Sam Altman publicly backed his call to slow down, according to TheStreet.

Karp, speaking on CNBC’s Squawk on the Street on September 17, offered a less charitable read of that unity. He argued the real motive behind AI leaders’ sudden caution is legal exposure. “The view that I believe they have is, these businesses have to be nationalized because if you don’t nationalize it, every single one of my clients is going to sue”.

More Palantir:

Palantir CEO admits AI would make him 20 times richer

Microsoft CEO adds fuel to Palantir CEO’s AI warning

Palantir CEO has a blunt verdict on OpenAI and Anthropic

His argument rests on a liability framework he laid out in detail. “The first line of defense is you’re liable for your own actions,” Karp said, adding that a company building something capable of catastrophic harm should face real civil and criminal consequences rather than relying on broader societal regulation to address the risks.

Karp was not calling for a shutdown. “You have to find a way to set reasonable guidelines,” he added. His point was that whoever builds something this powerful owns what happens next.

Why Karp’s warning doubles as a pitch for Palantir

It is worth noting who is saying this. Palantir sells governments and enterprises the exact kind of oversight, data-governance, and sovereign AI tooling that a world of tighter accountability would make more valuable. That conflict of interest sits behind every point Karp makes on this topic, and he does not try hard to hide it.

Karp has been saying a version of this for years. The U.S. needs to win at AI because the technology is dangerous, not because it is. He has made the argument on CNBC, at conferences and in shareholder letters. It has become his signature line.

The business behind the rhetoric has been strong. Palantir reported Q2 revenue of $1.935 billion, up 93% year over year, beating analyst estimates and raising its full-year guidance to $8.15 billion. The stock surged roughly 15% after hours when the numbers landed, CNBC reported.

None of that makes Karp’s underlying legal argument wrong, but it does explain why he is the one making it loudest. A regulatory regime built around liability and government partnership is one his company is already built to serve.

Karp’s comments landed in the middle of an active argument over what public ownership of AI should even look like.Bloomberg / Getty Images

The nationalization vs. IPO question splits Washington

Karp’s comments landed in the middle of an active argument over what public ownership of AI should even look like. Asked directly how liability would be handled if a company like OpenAI ever filed to go public, Karp dismissed the premise entirely, arguing the more likely endpoint is a company going to Washington and asking to be nationalized rather than seeking public shareholders, Quartz reported.

That comment lands differently given OpenAI’s own recent decision. Altman told Fortune that an IPO in 2026 would be “ill-advised” given the safety questions the industry is wrestling with, ruling out a listing this year after months of speculation, TheStreet reported.

Altman has floated his own version of public ownership, pitching a roughly 5% government equity stake modeled on Alaska’s Permanent Fund, worth an estimated $42.6 billion at OpenAI’s $852 billion March 2026 valuation, Forbes reported.

Senator Bernie Sanders has pushed a far more aggressive version of the same idea, proposing a 5% wealth tax on America’s billionaires to seed a public sovereign wealth fund that would include government stakes in major AI companies.

What investors should watch next

The AI industry itself remains divided on whether any of this caution is warranted. Nvidia’s Jensen Huang and Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg have argued that competitive market forces and existing liability incentives already give companies reason to develop AI safely without a coordinated slowdown, a direct contrast to Amodei, Altman and Musk’s call for deliberate restraint, TheStreet reported.

That divide, layered on top of Karp’s liability argument and competing government-ownership proposals, leaves genuine uncertainty over how Washington ultimately treats the sector. A dynamic the White House AI and crypto czar David Sacks has called a step toward “corporate-government fusion.”

For now, Karp’s comments stand out mainly for saying out loud what few others in the industry have been willing to admit: that some of the biggest names in AI may be less afraid of the technology than they are of the lawsuits waiting behind it.

Related: Google just disclosed something troubling about its AI