Why a sub shop in downtown Myrtle Beach may close this week after 43 years in business
Ken Conley doesn’t know all of his customers by name, but he usually knows the particulars of their favorite sub sandwich.
That’ll happen when you run a restaurant for more than four decades.
“Some people we know more intimately, but a lot of them we know just by what they eat when they come in,” Conley said.
But Conley believes he will serve his last meal at Mr. Sub on Thursday.
He and his brother Tom operate the restaurant that opened in 1979 and has become a landmark of sorts with its sub face caricature on Broadway Street in downtown Myrtle Beach.
Ken turned 65 on Sunday and Tom will turn 64 in April, and they have put the property up for sale and will shut the restaurant down at the close of business Thursday.
“We’re hoping somebody actually buys the business, but we’re getting out of it,” Ken Conley said. “We’ve been at it 43 years, we figure it’s time for somebody else to get a hold of this thing and try it out for a while. We’ve had a few people show an interest.”
Mr. Sub’s longstanding menu features a variety of oven-baked, grilled or cold subs; house, Greek and antipasto salads; and some extras and sides. It accepts dine-in and takeout orders.
The end of a sub era
The Conley family has owned the property and building since the early 1980s and has hired a Realtor who is fielding inquiries and offers.
Though the business and property have been on the market for a couple weeks, ‘for sale’ signs have only been in the windows since the weekend.
Mr. Sub has withstood the increased competition over the years from the influx of national chain sandwich shops in the area such as Subway, Jimmy John’s, Firehouse Subs and McAlister’s Deli, and never closed during the coronavirus pandemic due to a thriving takeout business.
“We’ve got a pretty nice local crowd. It’s not a bad little business to have,” Conley said. “You walk right into it and you’re pretty much guaranteed a nice crowd. A younger man needs to do this kind of stuff now. It’s getting hard for him and I to be working 9-hour days six days a week. It’s not in my pedigree anymore.”
Ken Conley said he’d like to find a part-time job. “I’m just looking for something different to do. For 40 years I’ve been doing this. I’d like to do something else in my next 40 years, you know,” he said.
Conley said closing the business and selling the property will be bittersweet in some ways because of the relationships that have been built with customers over the years.
“Some of these people this is the only place I see them, so I won’t get to see a lot of them. Some I’m going to be glad I don’t get to see again,” Conley joked, “but there’s a lot that I’m going to miss seeing.”
Mr. Sub expanded to four Grand Strand locations at one time, with restaurants in North Myrtle Beach, Surfside Beach and Conway in addition to another in Charleston, and they were all owned and operated by Conley family members.
The Surfside location opened around 1982 and the NMB restaurant opened in 1985, and both were in operation for about 20 years. The Conway store was open about eight years, Conley said.
The businesses closed as family members who were running them passed away, eventually leaving just the original on Broadway Street.
“When you start losing family members you start losing money out the doors and stuff like that,” Conley said.
The Charleston location was felled by a combination of Hurricane Hugo damaging the business and the closing of the Charleston Naval Shipyard, which depleted the customer base.
The final days
The restaurant’s hours are 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Saturday, but it closed at 2:30 p.m. Monday because it ran out of a lot of product.
The word is out that the end may be near.
It was posted on social media over the weekend that Mr. Sub was closing Thursday, and the restaurant was inundated with customers Monday.
The Conleys had to make a full order from their food supplier that will be delivered Tuesday for the final three days of business.
“I went through three times as much lettuce today as I do on a typical day. I went through everything,” Conley said. “I thought I was going to have a nice little easy order for my guy but I’ve got a full truck coming in [Tuesday].”
This story was originally published March 29, 2022 at 6:55 AM.
