Marmalade Cafe Filed for Bankruptcy. Four Cafes Are Still Open.

The Encino-based brunch chain listed more than $1 million owed to suppliers and the state after closing its Calabasas cafe.

Marmalade Cafe, the Encino-based brunch chain, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on September 2, 2026, with four restaurants still operating. Chief Executive Juan Salcedo put the company's assets and its liabilities in the same band, between $1 million and $10 million, and listed more than $1 million owed to Gilmore Farmers Market, US Foods, the California Department of Tax and Fee Administration and others, the Los Angeles Times reported.

If you have a standing weekend table, the surviving list is the part that matters, and it's short. As of the filing date the chain was serving four rooms:

• El Segundo
• Malibu
• Sherman Oaks, on Ventura Boulevard
• Westlake Village

What pushed the company into court, per the Times, was a shopping center under construction. Lindsay Arnold, the chain's director of operations, told the outlet that losses at the Commons at Calabasas were the main catalyst for the filing: rent there ran just under $80,000, and the construction work that began earlier this year cut monthly sales by $50,000. The parking lot went with it, which is not a small thing for a business that turns tables at breakfast and lunch and then goes quiet.

“By about May and June, we were like, ‘This is going to sink our whole company. We can’t do this,’” Arnold told the Times.

The Calabasas cafe closed in July after nearly thirty years. In a statement posted to social media at the time, the restaurant said it had asked its landlord for rent relief during the construction period and was turned down. Caruso, which developed the Commons at Calabasas, didn't immediately respond to the Times’ request for comment.

Two more rooms went dark before that. The Santa Monica cafe, which had moved off Montana Avenue when that original address closed in May 2024, shut in July, with losses from last year's Palisades fire compounding the problem. The Original Farmers Market location closed earlier this year after failing to get back to where it was before the pandemic.

The Santa Monica shop is where the whole thing started, in 1990 — 1,400 square feet, a bakery case, a few seats, salads and entrees. Three years later came Malibu with 100 seats and table service, and from there private dining rooms and a catering business feeding Boeing, Mattel, CBS and Warner Bros. Studios. A chain that spent thirty-six years adding square footage is now down to four dining rooms.

It isn't alone on the docket. FAT Brands, the Beverly Hills parent of Fatburger and Johnny Rockets, filed for Chapter 11 earlier this year, and in April so did Friendly Franchisees Corp., the La Palma company that runs one of California's largest groups of Carl's Jr. restaurants.

Arnold described the four remaining cafes to the Times as “very healthy and very strong,” and said the company expects them to stay open. Until a judge says otherwise, that's El Segundo, Malibu, Sherman Oaks and Westlake Village, same hours as before.

Source: latimes.com, retrieved September 13, 2026.