The shuttered Brio Italian Grille on Haddonfield Road will become a Fogo de Chão Brazilian steakhouse, part of the chain's push to open 14 to 16 new restaurants nationwide in 2026.

Cherry Hill Township has already issued the zoning permits needed to convert the former Brio space at Towne Place at Garden State Park into a Fogo de Chão, according to The Philadelphia Inquirer. The approved plans call for fully enclosing the awning-covered outdoor dining area and reducing seating from 367 to 296, according to a zoning permit obtained by Patch.

Fogo de Chão representatives first presented plans to Cherry Hill Township in November 2025, 42Freeway reported, and the remodeling project has been publicly put out for bid seeking contractors.

The Cherry Hill location is one of several New Jersey openings in the pipeline. The Dallas-based chain, which operates more than 110 restaurants worldwide, already has locations in Paramus, Wayne and Bridgewater. On Wednesday, Aug. 19, NJBIZ reported that Fogo de Chão signed a lease for an 8,000-square-foot restaurant at Freehold Raceway Mall, and a Princeton location near MarketFair shopping center is also planned.

The interest in Cherry Hill was no secret.

Joe Morris, an executive at M&M Realty Partners, which owns the landlord entity for Towne Place, told The Inquirer in June that the chain had been eyeing the retail center for more than a decade. "I can absolutely tell you, if Brio gives their space back, Fogo is 100% a tenant we would be interested in speaking with," Morris said at the time.

Brio Italian Grille closed its Cherry Hill location on Tuesday, July 28, ending a nearly two-decade run at the shopping center. The restaurant first opened in 2007 as Brio Tuscan Grille. Its parent company, Bravo Brio Restaurants, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in August 2025, its second filing in five years, and began shuttering underperforming locations.

Fogo de Chão's 2026 expansion is funded entirely through its own cash flow, Barry McGowan, the chain's CEO, said in a January press release announcing the growth plan. About 60% of the chain's new units open in second-generation restaurant space taken over from other operators, according to Restaurant Business.

"There's plenty of slack, but the slack is restaurants that are underperforming, doing poorly and being picked up by restaurants like us, doing really well," McGowan said at the ICR Conference in January.

No opening date for the Cherry Hill location has been announced. A Fogo de Chão spokesperson did not respond to NJBIZ's request for details on the Cherry Hill and Princeton timelines.