By Dylan Myers Aug. 5, 2024 10:30 am EST
Read More: https://www.mashed.com/1634393/struggling-chain-restaurants-made-comebacks/
Beginning in the early 2000s, we wondered if we were experiencing the slow and painful death of the chain restaurant. Restaurant goers were looking elsewhere for healthier options, and younger generations increasingly craved unique and trendy over reliable, cheap, or convenient. Even thousands of locations and global expansion couldn’t guarantee success for struggling chain restaurants. Confronted with the ever-expanding market of curbside pick-up and food delivery apps, if a family-friendly chain didn’t keep up with the times, it was all too easy to fall into bankruptcy, or worse, fade into irrelevance.
Other brands, however, knew how to keep their fingers on the pulse of the restaurant industry. Whether through the pruning of underperforming locations or an acquisition from a future-oriented parent company, many struggling chains have bounced back from hardships with grace, adapting to new times and learning how to provide customers with what they want most: a brand, an experience. While COVID-19 represented a bottleneck in the restaurant industry, and we still might lose some beloved chains because of it, plenty of brands squeezed through and are currently thriving. Read on to find out which struggling chain restaurants pulled off the most impressive comebacks.
3. Friendly’s
Friendly’s has experienced its fair share of ups and downs, and against the odds is still reinventing itself –– quite impressive considering it was founded as an ice cream shop in 1935 at the height of the Great Depression. Once an empire with 500 locations in the 1970s, the family-friendly chain fell on hard times in the 21st century, declaring bankruptcy twice within a decade. Most recently sold to Amici Partners in 2020, Friendly’s is currently down to 103 restaurants, but CEO Sherif Mityas is determined the chain is in its comeback era. “Some of the restaurant’s operations weren’t to our brand standard,” Mityas told Forbes referencing the pruning of 23 locations between 2020 and 2023, “They were old and tiresome. Sometimes to grow you have to shrink.”
With a three-tiered revitalization plan in action, Friendly’s is remodeling the interiors of its restaurants, adding new touches to the menu, and returning to its roots with marketing campaigns centered around the joys of family and ice cream. The chain has even partnered with the Jonas Brothers, offering Nick, Joe, and Kevin-themed sundaes on the menu. “We’ve been hooked on Friendly’s since we were little,” Kevin stated in a press release, “Fun fact: We decided on the band’s name at our local Friendly’s back in 2005.”
The restaurant chain is also expanding beyond the Northeast and opening locations in Texas, a rapidly growing, economically-booming state that Mityas believes will only spur Friendly’s upward trajectory.
Read More: https://www.mashed.com/1634393/struggling-chain-restaurants-made-comebacks/
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