Apr. 25—Closing sales began nationally Wednesday at 360 Bed Bath & Beyond outlets — including the location at Santa Fe Place mall — after the company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection Sunday.

Once a major home goods retail player throughout the country, Bed Bath & Beyond has four stores in New Mexico with two in Albuquerque, one in Las Cruces and the Santa Fe location.

Bed Bath & Beyond announced "deep discounts." Wednesday will be the last day the store accept its oversized blue coupons, but Welcome Rewards and merchandise credits can be redeemed until May 15 and gift cards can be used until May 8, the company announced on its website.

Often enough, Chapter 11 bankruptcy means business as usual at stores, and many businesses emerge from bankruptcy. But in its Sunday bankruptcy announcement, Bed Bath & Beyond said it would "implement an orderly wind down of its businesses."

The 360 stores will remain open in the meantime until a likely June 30 closure, but Bed Bath & Beyond will also try to auction off some or all of its assets.

Bed Bath & Beyond in August announced intentions to close 150 stores — none in New Mexico. Just five years ago, the Union, N.J., company had as many as 994 stores. In a February 2022 annual report, it claimed 771 locations.

The Bed Bath & Beyond decline has festered for a decade or more as the company stumbled in the emergence of online shopping and didn't keep up with Target and Walmart as their store counts grew and they embraced home goods. Bed Bath & Beyond in 2019 started to shift to house brands and away from national brands.

Brenda Jaffe has shopped at Bed Bath & Beyond for some 30 years and figures she has some 60 of the blue 20% off coupons at her Santa Fe and Maryland homes.

"I won't be happy about that," Jaffe said about the likely disappearance of Bed Bath & Beyond. "There are a lot of household items that are hard to get online."

She shopped at the Santa Fe store Tuesday.

"It was somber," Jaffe said. "They spread the merchandise as much as they could to cover the spots. I'm seeing very small pickings. I heard them yell out several times, 'all sales are final.' "

Bed Bath & Beyond, established in New Jersey in 1971, arrived in Santa Fe in 2002 at the Cerrillos Marketplace.

In 2016, as new Santa Fe Place owner Spinoso Real Estate Group busily revitalized the south-side mall, Bad Bath & Beyond and Cost Plus World Market were recruited to occupy the former Regal Cinemas space. Bed Bath & Beyond is 25,289 square feet.

Santa Fe Place management and Kohan Retail Investment Group, which acquired the mall in December, did not respond to calls for comment.

An anchor vacancy may not rattle Kohan much. The Great Neck, N.Y., owner of 60 malls specializes in "revitaliz[ing] the malls and envision[ing] a new future for them."

"We believe the future of these large indoor spaces will be more of a hybrid of entertainment, food and retail than the past model where retail reigned supreme," Kohan proclaims on its website. "With the closing of many large anchor stores around the country in the past decade, those large spaces offer unique opportunities for venues of all different types."