PetSmart will close its Folsom, California store on Nov. 22, joining a wave of pet retailer shutdowns driven by online competition from Chewy and Amazon.
The Folsom location at Broadstone Plaza I, 2705 E. Bidwell St., is set to shut its doors next month. A second PetSmart in the same city, at 2375 Iron Point Road, will stay open about a mile away.
TheStreet reported the planned closure as part of a wider pullback across the pet retail sector, where big chains are shrinking their brick-and-mortar footprint after years of pressure from online sellers.
PetSmart did not give a specific reason for closing the Folsom store. A company representative pointed customers to the nearby Iron Point location and to delivery options instead.
"We remain committed to serving pet parents throughout the area, who will continue to have access to our nearby Folsom-Iron Point store, located about 1 mile away, as well as online shopping with convenient delivery options,"
That message matches the pattern. When a chain loses ground in a local market, it steers shoppers to the next store and to the website. The Folsom move lands four months after PetSmart closed its last shop in San Francisco in July.
In the Bay Area, PetSmart has been blunt about why the model is changing. More customers are ordering online, setting up automatic shipments, and choosing same-day delivery. The company says it is adjusting how it serves the region as a result.
"As more customers choose online ordering, autoship, and same-day delivery, we're continuing to adapt how we serve pet parents across the Bay Area,"
After the San Francisco shutdown, PetSmart told customers they could still use nearby stores, including one in Daly City, plus online ordering. The company framed the San Francisco exit as the product of “a number of factors,” without listing them in detail.
PetSmart still runs more than 1,660 stores across North America. One California closure does not end the chain. It does show which locations no longer clear the bar when shoppers can tap a phone and skip the parking lot, a shift also visible in earlier PetSmart California store cuts tied to the same online pressure.
PetSmart is not alone. Petco closed a net of 25 locations in 2024, then shut more than two dozen additional stores in 2025 during a restructuring push. The company still operates more than 1,500 stores in the United States, Mexico, and Puerto Rico. The direction of travel is clear: fewer doors, tighter maps, more reliance on channels that do not require a lease.
Tractor Supply Company’s Petsense brand went further. In July 2026, it said it would close 75 of its 208 locations. Management described those sites as having “negative four-wall cash flow,” meaning the stores were losing money after covering their own operating costs. Keeping them open would have drained cash that could go elsewhere in the business.
That kind of math is unforgiving. A store that cannot cover its own rent, labor, and inventory does not stay open out of nostalgia. Petsense’s large closure wave made the same point in public: unprofitable four walls get cut.
Chewy and Amazon sit at the center of the competitive story. Both make bulk food, litter, and routine supplies simple to reorder. For many households, the weekly bag of kibble no longer requires a trip to a big-box pet aisle. The chains still matter for grooming, vet clinics, adoption events, and impulse buys. The high-volume staples are another matter.
When those staples move online, the economics of a large retail floor change. Square footage that once paid for itself on repeat food runs starts to look expensive. Chains respond the way private businesses do when the customer leaves: they close the weak sites, keep the stronger ones, and push delivery and autoship.
That is not a failure of “retail culture.” It is customers voting with their wallets. The same force has hit other specialty chains that bet too long on physical space while shoppers shifted screens and shipping, including cases where a retailer abandoned every storefront for online-only sales.
Pet retail is one corner of a larger pattern. Brands that built their names on malls and strip centers are pruning locations that no longer earn their keep. Some cut by the dozen. Others shut entire formats. The common thread is simple: if the store cannot compete on convenience and price with a warehouse and a delivery van, the lease ends.
California-born apparel chain Torrid’s large store purge in a pivot toward digital sales fits the same consumer shift, as do smaller-format exits at major home retailers that now lean harder on planning tools and delivery rather than every local showroom. Shoppers get speed. Companies get lower fixed costs. Workers and landlords in the closed sites get the hard end of the adjustment.
None of that requires a government program to explain it. It requires a balance sheet. Petco’s multi-year cuts, Petsense’s 75-store hit list, and PetSmart’s Folsom and San Francisco exits all point to the same ledger test. Locations that drain cash get closed. Locations that still draw traffic stay. Online options fill the gap the company claims it can still serve.
Other national retailers have made the same call on underperforming formats, including Ikea’s decision to close smaller plan-and-order shops while emphasizing digital and delivery. The pet aisle is not special. It is just next.
For Folsom pet owners, the practical hit is one fewer local option at Broadstone Plaza. The Iron Point store remains roughly a mile away, and PetSmart is pitching delivery as the backup. That may work for bagged food and litter. It is less convenient for same-day returns, in-person advice, or services tied to a specific store floor.
PetSmart’s public line stays consistent across these exits. Nearby stores. Online carts. Commitment to “pet parents.” The company is not promising to reverse the trend. It is promising workarounds while the map gets smaller in places where traffic no longer supports two locations, or even one.
"We remain committed to serving pet parents throughout San Francisco, who will continue to have access to nearby PetSmart locations, including our Daly City store, as well as online shopping with convenient delivery options,"
That San Francisco statement could be swapped into the Folsom notice with little editing. The script is standardized because the problem is standardized: fewer customers walking in, more customers clicking through, and leases that still come due every month.
Market discipline is blunt. Chains that ignore empty aisles and weak four-wall results eventually face worse outcomes than a planned Nov. 22 closing. PetSmart, Petco, and Petsense are choosing the controlled cut. Shoppers who wanted free two-day kibble already cast their vote. The store lights going dark are the count.
In a free economy, the customer is the boss, and when the boss moves online, the unprofitable storefront does not get a bailout.