Vegan restaurant chain Clover shuttered all of its locations Thursday, including the one on Washington Street in Newtonville.

And Newton made sure to send them off with the busiest day they’ve had in a while.

“It was really crowded this morning, and we ran out of food around 12:30,” one employee, just going by Dan, said as he helped close the restaurant one last time.

The popular lunch spot had prime real estate—nestled near the village center on the first floor of the Trio building next to the New Art Center and CVS—and it was often crowded.

But the company, which was launched as a food truck at MIT 2008 by Ayr Muir, never made a full rebound from the COVID-19 pandemic that devastated the global economy.

“It’s been kind of a long time coming,” Dan said. “We had some times where things were going well, but we were in enough of a hole from a bankruptcy and COVID that we just never kind of dug our way out of the hole.”

A few months ago, company executives warned that investors wanted to sell and if a buyer wasn’t found, the company would go out of business. And that’s just what happened.

“If you walked into Clover today, the staff are smiling, the tables are sparkling, and the fritters smell amazing, so this news might seem like a surprise,” Clover CEO Julie Wrin Piper said in a company blog post Thursday morning.

Piper said the reason for the closure is similar to that of countless other companies that have fallen into the post-pandemic abyss.

“For years we’ve been navigating the hangover effects of COVID and inflation at every part of our supply chain, but we are proud to have remained committed to sourcing high-quality ingredients from local farms,” she continued. “Today, everyone is getting hit with rising costs—food prices are up, delivery prices are up, and a hundred other costs are moving in the same direction…even the less flashy things like cardboard and fry oil.”

There’s no word yet on what will move into 835 Washington St., but it can be added to the list of vacant storefronts Newton Economic Development Director Lauren Berman is working to fill.