Three Vermont restaurants permanently closed during the past few weeks, including two bagel shops that disappeared without warning. The losses add to the restaurant closures that have surprised diners across the country, although Vermont’s latest shutdowns involve distinctly local businesses rather than national chains.
The three restaurants served two very different parts of the state. Feldman’s Bagels had locations in Burlington and St. Albans, while wit & grit. was a homey breakfast-and-lunch restaurant in Randolph.
Feldman’s Bagels in Burlington
The original Feldman’s Bagels at 660 Pine Street in Burlington abruptly went out of business on June 18, 2026.
Customers arrived to find a handwritten sign announcing that the restaurant had closed. Scrawled in red marker, it read: “I’m sorry but Feldmans has gone out of bussiness [sic].” A brief social media statement later confirmed that the shutdown was permanent and effective immediately. “Sorry to announce with a heavy heart,” it read. “Feldmans Bagels will be closing its doors effective immediately. We would like to thank our loyal customers.”
The Feldman’s name has deep Vermont roots. Roy Feldman first introduced his New York-style bagels and bialys to the state in 1979, when he opened two Bagel Bakery shops in Burlington. He later stepped away, then returned on May 1, 2013, reopening as Feldman’s Bagels at the Pine Street location in Burlington’s South End — this time alongside his daughter, Maddy Feldman, as a father-daughter team.
After four years, the family sold the business to Bob Leonard on February 21, 2017. Leonard expanded Feldman’s into several Vermont communities, though the shop grew and contracted over the years, and other locations had already closed before the final two shut down.
The Burlington restaurant was where the Feldman’s story began. Its closure therefore eliminated not only another breakfast option but also the original home of a local business that had operated under the Feldman’s name for 13 years.
The lack of advance notice made the announcement particularly jarring for regular customers and employees.
Feldman’s Bagels in St. Albans
Feldman’s St. Albans location also permanently closed on June 18, 2026.
The shop opened in August 2018, about a year and a half after Bob Leonard purchased the original Burlington business. It brought Feldman’s bagels to a community roughly 30 miles north of Burlington and became the company’s most enduring expansion outside its original city. (A third shop opened in Shelburne in March 2019.)
Although both locations carried the same name and menu, the St. Albans shop served its own group of regular customers. For those diners, the closure means losing a local breakfast stop rather than simply another branch of a distant chain.
The company’s farewell thanked its loyal customers but offered little public explanation for why both restaurants had to close immediately.
With the simultaneous shutdowns, Feldman’s Bagels disappeared entirely from Vermont, 13 years after the Feldman’s name returned to Burlington.
wit & grit. in Randolph
wit & grit. served its final meals on June 28, 2026, after four and a half years at 29 Merchants Row in Randolph.
The homey breakfast-and-lunch restaurant was known for dishes with playful names, including loaded Piles o’ Taters, chicken-and-cheese Stake Your Claim wraps, “Parfait for the Course” yogurt bowls and biscuits and gravy dubbed “Mind Your Biscuits and Life Will Be Gravy.”
Owner Hannah Arias opened the restaurant with business partner Ericka Grygowski on January 2, 2022, and had operated it independently since July 2023. The pair took over a space previously occupied by Black Krim Tavern, which had closed in July 2021 after more than a decade when its chef-owner became a culinary arts instructor at the Randolph Technical Center. wit & grit. described itself as a woman-owned, lesbian-owned, mom-owned business.
Arias, 49, and her family moved to Portland, Maine, in August 2025 for her wife’s job. She continued commuting to Randolph for the restaurant’s Friday-through-Monday schedule, with help from head chef Cassidy Dezan and manager Dana Wachtman, but the arrangement eventually became too difficult.
Staffing challenges placed Arias back in the kitchen and contributed to her decision that it was time to prioritize her family, which includes two children, ages 10 and 13. “I’ve missed birthday parties and softball games,” she told Seven Days. She said the restaurant had become part of her identity and praised the community connections and opportunities to mentor younger employees.
The Randolph space is now available for lease, although Arias is retaining the wit & grit. name and has left open the possibility that the concept could eventually return somewhere closer to her family. “I need to close this chapter, but I hope it can be reborn,” she said, “just a bit farther east.”
Three closures leave holes in their communities
The two Feldman’s closures came with little warning, while customers had several weeks to prepare for wit & grit.’s farewell.
Their circumstances were different, but all three restaurants depended on the loyalty that local businesses build through repeated visits. Customers knew the employees, developed favorite orders and incorporated the restaurants into their weekly routines.
That is why the loss of a neighborhood restaurant can feel larger than the disappearance of a place to eat. Burlington, St. Albans and Randolph are each losing a small part of their communities.
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