Two Texas locations of Voodoo Brewery, a mostly franchise-owned brewpub chain, closed last week, bringing the chain’s number of shuttered locations to five in 2025.
The Plano, Texas Voodoo location announced its closure on September 30, one day after the shuttering of another Voodoo in College Station.
“It’s with heavy hearts that we share this news: Voodoo Brewing Co. – Plano will be closing our doors,” co-owners Jennifer and Jeremy Dartez wrote on Facebook. “This is not the way we imagined this chapter ending, but despite pouring everything we had into this brewpub, we simply cannot continue.”
The Dartezes opened Voodoo Plano in March 2024.
Two hundred miles south, the leadership of Voodoo College Station pointed to nearby construction work as the reason for sluggish sales.
“Unfortunately, the ongoing high-rise construction surrounding us created challenges that were beyond what we could have imagined,” owner Rona Bomkamp wrote in a Facebook post. “The impact on our building, accessibility, and daily operations made it impossible to continue in the way we had hoped. These circumstances weren’t known to us when we started this journey, and despite giving it everything we had, we simply couldn’t overcome them.”
Bomkamp and her husband opened the brewpub in September 2024. At the time, she told KBTX she “enjoy[ed] watching that construction every day – it’s exciting.”
Voodoo was founded in 2005 in Meadville, Pennsylvania, and acquired by brothers Curtis and Matteo Rachocki in 2011, according to the brewery’s 2024 Honeycomb crowdfunding campaign. The Rachockis used crowdfunding to open Voodoo’s first taproom in 2012.
Since then, the company has expanded to three corporate-owned locations: Meadville, Erie and State College, Pennsylvania. Voodoo added a centralized production facility to supply beer to its locations in 2017, according to a document filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) as part of the Honeycomb campaign.
Other franchise-owned locations that closed in 2025 include Houston, Pennsylvania (closed on June 3); Cincinnati, Ohio (May 14); and Fort Myers, Florida (March 30).
There are 21 Voodoo locations owned by franchisees across Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Maryland, Nevada, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Texas and Virginia.
A website detailing franchising opportunities is no longer available, but was captured on March 18 by web archive the Wayback Machine. It listed an initial investment between $479,000 and $1,144,000, with a franchise fee of $75,000 for a single location, $150,000 for three, and $200,000 for five.
Perspective franchisees were required to have $800,000 in net worth and $400,000 in liquid capital.
“The initial financial investment for a Voodoo Brewing Co. pub franchise is one-quarter of the cost of competitor breweries (and, not to brag, but we don’t see their brews getting recognized by top beer connoisseurs worldwide),” Voodoo wrote. “Bottom line: you can own a pub franchise that has world-renowned Voodoo Brewing Co. craft beer on tap for 75% less than a competing brewery franchise.”
Voodoo began offering franchises in 2018, and had sold more than 50 by 2022, according to the SEC filing. The company’s central brewing facility ships beer to franchises, so no beer is brewed on-site.
“You can own the best brewpub in your city without ever brewing a single craft beer yourself,” the archived franchise website said. “All you have to do is sell it to people in your community who like to drink good craft beer — it doesn’t get much simpler than that!”
Voodoo was the 20th largest brewpub in the country by volume in 2024, according to data from the Brewers Association (BA). Last year, its output declined 10%, to 4,956 barrels of beer, after peaking in 2023 at 5,500 barrels.
Last month, Iron Hill Brewery, another multi-state brewpub chain, abruptly shut down all 16 locations.
Brewpubs accounted for 6.6% of all craft beer by volume in 2024, according to the BA. The country’s 3,552 brewpubs produced a combined 1.5 million barrels of beer last year, according to the trade group, which defines brewpubs as craft breweries that sell at least 75% of their volume on-site and offer significant food service.