Myrtle Beach has more restaurants per capita than Paris and NYC. How’d it get there?
The miles and miles of salty, sandy beaches are, understandably, what attract most people to Myrtle Beach. But once they get here, how can a region with only 350,000 permanent residents feed the 10 million visitors who come each year?
Residents and visitors alike can thank the city’s whopping 1,700 restaurants. Myrtle Beach boasts so many restaurants, in fact, that the “redneck riviera” has more restaurants per capita than its high-class cousins across the globe including New York, Paris and even Rome.
Per 100,000 people, Myrtle Beach has 480 restaurants, according to the Myrtle Beach Chamber of Commerce. By comparison, New York, Paris and Rome each have 310, 367 and 477 restaurants per 100,000 residents, according to the World Cities Culture Forum, which tracks such data across 35 major cities around the globe, though it does not include Myrtle Beach.
Only five cities on the Forum’s list have more restaurants per capita than Myrtle Beach, including Tokyo, Milan and Lisbon, Portugal.
Several factors aligned in the last few decades to push Myrtle Beach to the top echelons of the restaurants industry. For one, Horry County’s quickly growing population created an increased demand for more restaurants, specifically national chains like Chili’s or LongHorn Steakhouse that often won’t move to a new region until it nears close to 500,000 people in the metropolitan statistical area
“When we hit that… it’s almost like a red beacon went on for a lot of national chains, national retailers and others that don’t traditionally come into a market until your population reaches a half a million,” said Stephen Greene, the CEO of the Myrtle Beach Area Hospitality Association.
The growing population across Carolinas in general also helped, as more and more people flocked to Myrtle Beach for close-to-home vacations. Finally, the growth of air travel, specifically the ever-increasing number of cities with direct flights to the Myrtle Beach International Airport, made it possible for more people from faraway destinations to reach the Grand Strand easily.
Not everyone is a fan of the brightly lit chains like Fuddruckers and McDonald’s franchises that line Kings Highway, 17 Bypass and Ocean Boulevard. But, Greene said, they serve an important niche, offering periodic comfort food to travelers and ensuring that lines don’t get too long at restaurants across the region.
And while some might worry those chains will put local restaurants out of business, Greene said it’s hard to place the blame entirely on them. The restaurant business is notoriously hard to survive in. Some do and some don’t. The Myrtle Beach area has plenty of evidence, though, that local restaurants can do well here.
Murrells Inlet near Georgetown and restaurant row in North Myrtle Beach both have prominent, thriving, local staples like Dead Dog Saloon and Bubba’s Love Shak.
“You see so many different restaurants that are local, have been here forever, doing very well. But then you also have restaurants that maybe are more geared to those different communities that have come in,” Greene said. “Some people feel very comfortable and only stay in chains. ... A lot of people have very specific labels they want to eat at, and then others want to try all of the things that we have.”
However, he says, this competition doesn’t necessarily bode badly for smaller, local restaurants. “I’ve been here since the mid-90s; a lot of the places that I frequented that were here in the 90s are still here,” Greene said.
The national chains also help bring variety to Myrtle Beach, which in turn makes the region more attractive as a tourist destination overall.
“In general, Myrtle Beach-area restaurants have grown as the destination has grown over the last 10 to 20 years. This industry thrives largely because of our thriving tourism industry,” said Karen Riordan, CEO of the Myrtle Beach Area Chamber of Commerce. “Our area has the expected chain restaurants, but with Murrell’s Inlet being the seafood capital of South Carolina, we also have a lot of great local seafood restaurants up and down the Grand Strand that provide access to fresh, local food and a resident and tourist base who love that local fare.”
The pandemic, Greene said, created a perfect example of why so many restaurants can survive in the Grand Strand. When dining sat at only 50% capacity during the summer, people often had to wait for hours just to get a table, frustrating many tourists, — and locals — who were tired of being stuck at home cooking their own food.
“Without these new restaurants that are coming in, we would have capacity issues at the size range that we are at with our visitors now,” Greene said.
