Friendly's looks at bankruptcy

Their website has a tab called "moms" under which they have advice about motivating kids and such. Yes, because apparently the only people doing caregiving of children are "moms."

...and this only occurs when I'm there because other people wanted to go.

The place has NOTHING vegetarian. And I'm not even remotely a health-food nut when I go out. I'm happy to eat veggie burgers, greasy pizza, crappy burritos, etc. But no, nothing of the sort there. The other mediocre American restaurants all have vegetarian stuff. Really, how hard is it for a place that serves burgers to have a case of veggie patties in the freezer? Burger King even has them, for fuck's sake.

They were waiting for a Fribble and a grilled cheese sandwich.

This was funny. Nice work. The bankruptcy filing itself isn't such a bad thing, as bankruptcy helps many companies restrucutre and get back on their feet. However, the bankrtupcy and proposed sale of the company has an ominous ring to it. Sounds less like reorganization and more like liquidation.

Yup. years of ownership transfers, which means loss of direction for companies. Every time a new owner takes over, they try something new (that fails). (or just doesn't take off).

Then throw in some bad PR (i.e. the Arlington Hep outbreak) and stores being closed due to health department inspections. And for the cherry on top, dirty stores, poor service, bad food. Its just a failing combination.

The other problem is, the 70s and 80s, Friendly's had little competition. Today there's Denny's, IHOP, Applebees, and a million other sit down chain restaurant, Friendly's lost its edge. Plus we're more health conscious these days, and let's face it, Friendlys food isnt much better, health-wise, than eating at McDonalds. (its all fatty grilled or fried foods).

As a child in NH, my parents used to take us to visit our grandparents in CT. This required a drive down Interstate 91. We *always* stopped at Friendlys in Greenfield because it was half way, and decent food and good service. It's still that way (we stopped on our way last year). Why? because its a high volume store, and its RIGHT next to the highway, and from what a former Friendlys GM told me, its a Corporate Owned store, so it's always held to the highest standards. Its also one of the busiest in the chain because of its proixmity to the highway.

But when I moved here, I ate a couple of Friendlys around here.. all I have to say is GROSS. Dirty stores that havent been updated since the 70s. Service that sucked, and food that was so so. I've yet to go to one in this area that doesn't suck.

It really is sad because Friendly's could be a nice chain if they revamped the menu, remodeled older stores, retrain or hire new staff, and started yanking franchise agreements from franchisers who are running sub-par stores that don't meet corporate standards. However because years of neglect from management, and years of bad experiences by customers, people would be hard pressed to give back and give it another try.

I thought the Friendlys Express idea would have taken off since it refocused on their core products, but apparently Sun Capital didn't want to invest the time or the money into it. It might have saved it.

We can only hope that if they liquidate, Hood or some other ice cream manufacturer buys the rights to the ice cream sold in supermarkets, because that hasn't changed. Funny, I think wholesale ice cream manufacturing is what has kept the chain alive all this time.. its certianly not the stores.

Was this in Rhode Island? I thought that is what old school people called frappes/shakes there in general?