Bed Bath & Beyond in Visalia on Monday, January 4, 2021.
Sacramento, California – Bed Bath & Beyond is back—but not in California.
The home-goods retailer, which filed for bankruptcy and shuttered all its stores in 2023, reopened its first new store earlier this month in the Nashville area. But in a statement released Aug. 20, Executive Chairman Marcus Lemonis said the company has no plans to return to the country’s most populous state.
“California will be served solely through delivery,” Lemonis wrote. “We’re taking a stand because it’s time for common sense. Businesses deserve the chance to succeed. Employees deserve jobs that last. And customers deserve fair prices. California’s system delivers the opposite.”
The announcement quickly caught the attention of Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office, which fired back on X that most Americans had already assumed the brand had disappeared after its bankruptcy. “We wish them well in their efforts to become relevant again as they try to open a 2nd store,” the governor’s press office quipped.
Lemonis, who also serves as CEO of Camping World and has a reputation for courting controversy, doubled down online. Responding directly to Newsom, he said California’s high regulatory burdens and costs make opening stores there untenable. “We will target opening 300 small to midsize neighborhood stores thru our Kirklands investment,” he added, while insisting the move “isn’t about politics.”
But the statement from Bed Bath & Beyond leaned heavily into grievances with state policy. “California has created one of the most overregulated, expensive, and risky environments for businesses in America,” Lemonis wrote.
It wasn’t the first time Lemonis has clashed with California regulators. In 2024, San Joaquin County officials ordered one of his Camping World locations to remove a 130-foot flagpole installed without permits. The oversized flag eventually came down during the permitting process. Lemonis told a Sacramento news station later that year that he ordered the flag raised again, saying he didn’t believe it posed safety risks.
He has also been a vocal critic of a California law requiring corporations with more than $1 billion in annual revenue to report their greenhouse gas emissions, dismissing it on Fox Business as a “crazy law.”
For a company trying to climb back from bankruptcy, the decision to skip California altogether is striking. With nearly 40 million residents, the state is the largest consumer market in the country. Choosing to serve it only through online sales may save Bed Bath & Beyond some regulatory headaches, but it also cuts the brand off from the foot traffic and visibility it once enjoyed in dozens of California suburbs.
Whether this gamble pays off is an open question. For now, Bed Bath & Beyond’s comeback tour is avoiding the Golden State—and making a political point on the way out.
