Store #256 at 601 S. Bernardo Ave. appears to be the only Arby's left in the nine-county Bay Area after a two-decade run of closures from Menlo Park to Pleasanton. A Reddit post about a Pleasanton-to-Sunnyvale roast beef pilgrimage put the lone survivor back in the spotlight.

One diner drove the length of the East Bay this week for a chicken sandwich. In a post to r/bayarea that drew 137 upvotes and 152 comments, a user going by Bart-and-Lisa described making the trip from Pleasanton down to Sunnyvale for what the thread called "the Bay's last Arby's" — and left wishing there were more of them.

By most available counts, there aren't. The Arby's at 601 S. Bernardo Ave. — corporate Store #256 — appears to be the only location still operating in the nine-county Bay Area. It is run not by the chain but by Altamira Corporation, a Fremont-based franchise operator incorporated in 1981 and led by Randhir S. Kang. The store passed its most recent Santa Clara County health inspection on July 30, 2025, with a clean, no-violation score.

Getting to lone-survivor status took about two decades of attrition. The Menlo Park Arby's at 761 El Camino Real closed May 7, 2006 after a 30-year run when it lost its lease; corporate told the Almanac at the time, "We'll be back!" It never returned to the Peninsula. South San Francisco's location on El Camino Real went dark around March 2017. That summer, the Pleasanton Arby's at 5900 Owens Dr. — the one nearest this week's road-tripper — closed and was replaced by a Starbucks. Two San Francisco locations, on Sloat and Geary boulevards, have since shuttered as well, though exact dates aren't documented in public records.

The pattern isn't local. Arby's parent closed 48 U.S. restaurants in 2024, roughly 1.4 percent of its footprint.

Arby's corporate hasn't declared Sunnyvale its final Bay Area outpost — the "last one" label comes from customers and directory data, not a press release. But drive the region looking for a roast beef sandwich, and Bernardo Avenue is where the map runs out.