There are certain restaurants that today’s parents associate with their own childhood. In many cases, these are chains that catered to kids while also serving their parents.
Long-close chains like Ground Round offered free meals on your birthday, peanuts at the table, and a now-uncomfortable pay what you weigh promotion.
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Many of these family, friendly restaurants were also built around the idea of offering kids things they could not get at home. This started with the main meal, where burgers, chicken fingers, grilled cheese and other kid-friendly favorites were offered alongside French fries.
These chains were all-ages affairs. During the week they catered to older folks for breakfast and lunch. Liver and onions was at least a special, if not a regular menu item, and patty melts were almost certainly offered.
Every region had restaurants like this, where meals were always followed by ice cream, maybe even a sundae. This format, however, has largely died out.
There are very few chains which serve three meals a day while also operating a full ice cream counter: It’s a format that’s a variation of a diner, with better ice cream, and an extensive, but not full-on diner menu extensive.
One of the most popular of this sort of chains, Friendly’s has been slowly dying.
Friendly’s was a treat for kids that parents also enjoyed going to.
Image source: Shutterstock
Friendly’s is a throwback chain
Friendly’s has a special place in my heart as it does for many people born in the 1970s and 1980s in the northeast. The chain had a location in my hometown of Swampscott, Ma, and it was someplace my grandmother occasionally took my brother and I as a treat for breakfast.
On the rare occasions we went for lunch or dinner, it was an extra special treat since kids meals came with ice cream.
As I got older, Friendly’s expanded its menu to offer items like quesadillas, making it a favorite spot when we were in high school, given that Swampscott had very few options for food.
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The chain was a take on a diner and ice cream counter with a bit more flair. Friendly’s explains it mission on its web page.
“In 1935, the Blake Brothers founded their first ice cream shoppe in Springfield, Massachusetts, and named it ‘Friendly.’ The name was a promise that the small ice cream shoppe would be a friendly place for families to enjoy a meal together. We still believe in that promise,” it shared.
The Fishamajig was almost up
At one point, the Friendly’s model really worked. The chain had over 850 locations at its peak, but that number has dropped off by roughly 90%.
That has been a slow attrition with stores closing on a local basis instead of some mass company-based decision.
The chain has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy twice, first in 2011 and then again in 2020. In both cases, Friendly’s lost some locations,
Now, the chain has 99 remaining restaurants but its CEO believes a comeback is possible.
“We are not going to grow for growth’s sake,” said Sherif Mityas, CEO of Brix Holdings, the parent company of Friendly’s. “That got the old Friendly’s in trouble. We want to open three to four stores a year with the right partners to build on our brand awareness.”
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Those are modest goals for a chain which had 850 locations as recently as 1995.
The chain has been targeting. areas where Northeasterners who grew up with the brand now live. That generally means warmer climate locations in the south.
“The opportunity for guests, especially middle-class families, to have that [sit-down family] experience and not spend $100, we think that is a sustainable and needed value offering,” Mityas said.