Beloved restaurant chain with 119 outlets and 90 years of service abruptly closes store doors for go
A BELOVED restaurant chain has closed one of its stores for good, leaving fans devastated.
Chiefs at Friendly’s shuttered its eatery in Webster, Massachusetts for good on Monday.
It's not known why the Webster restaurant is closing down.
The closure comes just years after execs at the dining chain, which has more than 100 restaurants, filed for bankruptcy.
Friendly's has seen a slew of closures in recent decades.
In 1996, there were 850 locations in 15 states, but the number of stores is now fewer than 130, according to Mass Live.
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The decision to close the Friendly’s Webster restaurant has left fans in mourning.
Shaun. T Germain Costen posted on Facebook: “So many good memories from being a kid until present. I was starting a new tradition with my 3-year-old daughter... This just saddens me, deeply...”
Sue Russell Ogasian said: “I miss Friendly's so much! A great hangout for my teenage years.”
A fan reminisced that they used to buy peppermint ice cream at the diner.
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Other customers described the decision to close the restaurant as “unfriendly.”
The closure of the Webster restaurant has come just months after the Friendly’s restaurant in Palmer, Massachusetts shut down.
The Palmer restaurant had been trading for more than 60 years, per MassLive.
In February, the Friendly’s restaurant in Dover, Delaware – located around 50 miles from Wilmington – called time and has permanently closed.
Dennis Glacken, who was the general manager at the eatery between January 1993 and May 1998, told The Delaware News Journal that the closure impacted him “personally.”
He said: “Far and away, the best memories were some of the people I worked with.”
Friendly’s filed for bankruptcy in the fall of 2020 as chiefs said the chain had been hit by the “catastrophic impact of Covid-19.”
The chain has been a staple of the American dining scene since 1935 when the first restaurant opened in Springfield.
Bosses said they expected that almost all of the restaurant’s 130 outlets at the time would remain trading.
Court papers, seen by Restaurant Business, revealed the chain had been “losing money for some time.”
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Around $88million worth of debt was waived at the time of the bankruptcy filing.
Friendly’s had previously filed for bankruptcy in 2011.
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