If you have watched enough of your favorite stores blink out over the past few years, the news that Petco is closing locations may land with a familiar sink in your stomach. So let’s start with the reassurance: Petco is not going out of business. It has not filed for bankruptcy. What it is doing is trimming, deliberately and for the second year running.
The company is closing 25 underperforming stores across the country in 2025, the same number it cut in 2024. The reason, per reporting from Fast Company, is declining sales. As of mid-September, 13 of those closures had already happened.
The stores that have closed so far
Based on that reporting, the locations shuttered in 2025 to date include:
- 125 W Lincoln Hwy, Exton, Pennsylvania, 19341
- 1725 Twin Creek Pl., Walla Walla, Washington, 99362
- 3100 14th St. Ste. 124, Washington, D.C., 20010
- 16835 E Shea Blvd. Ste. 105, Fountain Hills, Arizona, 85268
- 8775 Tualatin Sherwood Rd., Tualatin, Oregon, 97062
- 1006 Keller Pkwy Ste. 103, Keller, Texas, 76248
- 300 Ryders Ln., Milltown, New Jersey, 08850
- 210 Fortune Blvd., Milford, Massachusetts, 01757
- 239 Newburyport Turnpike, Topsfield, Massachusetts, 01983
- 32074 Gratiot Ave., Roseville, Michigan, 48066
- 4840 N Pulaski Rd. Ste. 100, Chicago, Illinois, 60630
- 2842 NW 63rd St., Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, 73116
- 444 N Santa Cruz Ave., Los Gatos, California, 95030
If your regular store is not on that list, it may still be fine. The 25 closures are drawn from a footprint the company describes as more than 1,500 stores across the U.S., Mexico, and Puerto Rico, and Petco frames the cuts as pruning the weakest performers rather than a retreat.
The numbers behind the decision
The financial picture explains the housecleaning. In its second-quarter results, Petco reported sales down 2.3 percent, with comparable sales, the retail metric that strips out new and closed stores, down 1.4 percent. The market has not been kind: shares of Petco, which trade under the fitting ticker WOOF, were down roughly 16 percent for the year and about 26 percent over the previous twelve months.
Closing a store that loses money is, unglamorously, one of the fastest ways to improve those figures. That is the logic here.
The bet Petco is making
Company leadership is putting an optimistic spin on the shrinkage. On the earnings call, CEO Joel Anderson cast the closures as part of a multi-phase “transformation,” with the company moving into the next stage of a turnaround and, notably, raising its guidance even while cutting stores. The stated goal is a return to profitable growth.
The most revealing line was about strategy. Anderson reportedly said the plan involves coaxing shoppers off their phones and back into physical stores, pets in tow.
That is the real tension in pet retail right now. Auto-shipping litter and kibble from an online retailer is undeniably convenient, and it has eaten into the reason to drive to a store. But a website cannot let your dog test-drive a squeaky ball or try on a harness, and it cannot recreate the specific, slightly chaotic joy of a physical pet store, the wall of leashes, the treat aisle, the faint smell of a thousand dogs and one small accident nobody cleaned up in aisle four. Petco is wagering that the in-person experience is worth defending, and that a leaner set of stores is the way to defend it.
Whether that bet pays off is the open question. For now, the chain is smaller, its strongest stores are being asked to carry more of the weight, and a few more neighborhoods will have to find somewhere else to take the dog shopping.
