Posted on 07/30/2012 4:02:31 PM PDT by matt04
Friendly’s future is going to look a lot like its past – its distant past – according to new CEO John M. Maguire.
It’ll be a future focused on ice cream and food standbys like Big Beefs, melts, fries and Fishamajigs, coupled with about five standard breakfast items.
Gone will be menu items that Maguire said just don’t fit with the consumer’s notion of Friendly’s: the bourbon barbecue chicken, the quesadilla.
“We have to focus on what our core customer wants,” he said. “I’m not sure anyone comes to Friendly’s for barbecue. But we have barbecue items on the menu.”
Maguire took the helm at Friendly’s about a month ago. And while Friendly’s is beloved here for its nostalgia, any discussion of the current restaurants is likely to focus on notoriously slow service and dirty, run-down restaurant locations.
Maguire wasn’t CEO during the bankruptcy, but he said the alternative would have been to close the chain. He said the bankruptcy saved 377 restaurants and about 5,700 jobs. It also freed up capital to invest in locations.
“I believe that in 12 to 18 months, Friendly’s can start growing again,” Maguire said. “If the locations are not making money, you can’t invest. You can’t grow. That’s when you get the debt coming in.”
...
As part of that bankruptcy, Friendly’s abandoned the company’s pension plan to the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. In he next few months, Friendly’s 6,000 retirees will start getting payments from Pension Guaranty, said spokesman Marc Hopkins.
“No one will miss a payment,” he said.
But for some, those checks will be smaller. The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. only backs up pensions to a certain maximum: in Friendly’s case, it is $54,000 a year for someone who retired at age 65.
(Excerpt) Read more at masslive.com ...
The kids also enjoyed their Kids Meals that came with the dessert.
He's not sure? And he's the CEO? I bet someone on his staff could figure it out for him.
This guy is a breath of fresh air. They practically killed the goose that was laying the golden egg. Friendly’s was, and should be, an ice cream shop. This junk they have been peddling is not edible.
Yeah, I remember it as ice cream and then I notice what seemed like restaurants and wondered what the heck was going on.
I’ve been to Friendly’s twice and the service was HIDEOUS both times. Slow, the food was NOT what I ordered, and then it took so long to get it that I ate the wrong order anyway. And then the check was wrong!
Bad, bad and worse. Good luck fixing it.
Our family bought Hagan-Daz PINTS for years and years. The day the company decided to short-change the public by getting rid of their pints and charging the same amount is the day we stopped buying Hagan-Daz. Haven't bought one faux-pint since, even though we love their Vanilla-Swiss Almond ice cream. We would have been willing to pay the extra to maintain receiving a full pint of their ice cream (like Ben and Jerry's still does), but since they wanted to screw us over by playing the "it looks nearly the same, but it isn't, even though we are charging you the same amount of money and more" game.
The same holds true for Friendly's ice cream.
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