This North Myrtle Beach restaurant and ice cream parlor has closed after two decades
James Sakalian has been happy with business recently at his Friendly’s restaurant and ice cream parlor on U.S. 17 in North Myrtle Beach, one of the franchisee’s three Friendly’s on the Grand Strand.
But a long-term lease is coming to a close in May and payments are about to go up. So he made the difficult decision to permanently close on Sunday after 21 years at that location.
“Business has been better. Things are trending up, which is good,” Sakalian said. “The reasoning up here is my lease was up . . . and it was time for them to go up in rent and it was just too much to handle with labor and food costs going up. Profitability wouldn’t have been there.”
His other Friendly’s remain open in Myrtle Beach near Family Kingdom on 6th Ave. South and Ocean Boulevard, which opened in 1999, and at 4705 North Kings Highway, which opened in 1998 and was remodeled in 2019. Sakalian said the latter location had its best year ever in 2021.
“The remodel we did came out beautifully and people like it,” he said. “It’s doing really well.”
The Friendly’s restaurant chain, based in Massachusetts, was purchased out of bankruptcy in January 2021 by Amici Partners Group, which is behind the brands Red Mango, Smoothie Factory, Souper Salad and others.
“[The Myrtle Beach stores] are fine and dandy and the new people that now own the company as of a year and three months ago are doing some good things,” Sakalian said. “I was happy with what was happening up here. It was finally turning around. Sales were improving, but it’s just a day late and a dollar short I guess.”
The decision to close was complicated by Sakalian’s relationship with his employees and some longtime customers.
“Two stores will make it easier, but I was sad about it because I have a lot of good regular customers up here that have been coming for years and years, so that made it hard to have to tell them we were done,” Sakalian said.
“And the other thing is I was worried about my employees, . . . so I gave them plenty of time to either decide to go down to the Myrtle Beach stores or have time to find another job, and everybody seems to be taken care of.”
