Roadside chains with at least one foot in the grave

[Pete from Boston]

The Associated Press broke over a few months ago, and they now use email for e-mail (or E-mail) and website for Web site. Both changes aggravated me to no end.

Does it upset you when people don't capitalize "internet"?

I ask because I resisted as well, but in all these cases, the rapid evolution in terms parallels the rapid evolution in the role of the technology.  I feel objecting to this is on par with objecting when alternatives to "hello" fell out of favor for answering the telephone.

[GCrites]

^Ahoy hoy and welcome to Cyberspace, 'Netizen.

[Pete from Boston]

^Ahoy hoy and welcome to Cyberspace, 'Netizen.

Reminds me that "on-line" now looks as antiquated as "to-day."

[ftballfan]

Sports Authority going under leaves Dick's as the only major player in a lot of the country.

Speaking of Dick's, at least they were able to buy dicks.com. I remember discovering that their website was "dickssportinggoods.com" the hard way when I was in middle school.

Acadamy sporting goods is in the Southeast, expanding into central Florida last year.

Over in Michigan, we have MC Sports and Dunham's Sports

[ftballfan]

Big Boy has lost quite a few locations in Western Michigan in recent years.
Grand Rapids area: Standale (demolished), Rogers Plaza (split between tenants), 28th and Englewood (was a Chinese buffet, now for sale again), 28th and Radcliff (strip mall, now a Mediterranean place), 28th and Kraft (now Bagger Dave's) [the 28th and Radcliff location only lasted maybe two years and opened well after the other 28th Street locations closed]
Grand Haven
Big Rapids (O'Reilly's Auto Parts going in there)
Muskegon
Manistee (demolished and controversially replaced with a Walgreens)
Plainwell
Kalamazoo

[hbelkins]

Another Ponderosa location bites the dust. The one in Hazard, Ky., which by all indications was doing extremely well, announced Friday that it will not be reopening. This restaurant got some notoriety because they posted on their marquee "Closed Due To Governor" when the governor ordered dine-in restaurants closed back in mid-March.

[SectorZ]

The Associated Press broke over a few months ago, and they now use email for e-mail (or E-mail) and website for Web site. Both changes aggravated me to no end.

There are far worse sins the AP commits than that to get riled up over.

[jp the roadgeek]

And the Blimpie location in my town deflated this past week.  Ends a legacy of almost 30 years of having one in my town in one location or another.  Only 2 left in CT now: Windsor, and (oddly enough) Chaplin.

[US71]

And the Blimpie location in my town deflated this past week.  Ends a legacy of almost 30 years of having one in my town in one location or another.  Only 2 left in CT now: Windsor, and (oddly enough) Chaplin.

Blimpie has been gone for several years here. We only have Subway , Firehouse, and Casey's General Store

[US71]

Does Smash Hit subs still exist? I've not seen any for a long time. They were part of the Hot Stuff Pizza chain.  There used to be one here in Ft Smith, but it disappeared a while back.

[webny99]

Another Ponderosa location bites the dust. The one in Hazard, Ky., which by all indications was doing extremely well, announced Friday that it will not be reopening. This restaurant got some notoriety because they posted on their marquee "Closed Due To Governor" when the governor ordered dine-in restaurants closed back in mid-March.

Another Ponderosa location bites the dust.  The one in Hazard, Ky., which by all indications was doing extremely well, announced Friday that it will not be reopening. This restaurant got some notoriety because they posted on their marquee "Closed Due To Governor" when the governor ordered dine-in restaurants closed back in mid-March.

Did you mean to post the same message in two different threads?

And 4 year and 8 year bumps, too!

[RobbieL2415]

Friendly's is done.  It has to be.  Too much competition in the markets it once dominated.  I can get the same style of food at a better quality elsewhere.  Maybe Dean Foods will buy the rest of the restaurant assets and use their stores for ice cream only.  Their ice cream is good, IMO.

[wanderer2575]

The Associated Press broke over a few months ago, and they now use email for e-mail (or E-mail) and website for Web site. Both changes aggravated me to no end.

Does it upset you when people don't capitalize "internet"?

It does me.  And when I see email instead of e-mail. 

On the other hand, I always write website instead of Web site.  So I'm contributing to the problem about which I complain.

[webny99]

Does it upset you when people don't capitalize "internet"?

It does me.  And when I see email instead of e-mail. 

How about e/m? That's got to be one worse.

[TheHighwayMan3561]

The Associated Press broke over a few months ago, and they now use email for e-mail (or E-mail) and website for Web site. Both changes aggravated me to no end.

There are far worse sins the AP commits than that to get riled up over.

I recall reading recently about how the Japanese government requested from the AP that Japanese citizens start to be be referred to properly by their last name first (which the AP does for Chinese and Korean nationals) and the AP declined the request. What good reason is there for declining something not only so simple but a country's legitimate naming custom?

[Scott5114]

It should be written E. mail, just like E. coli.

[jeffandnicole]

And the Blimpie location in my town deflated this past week.  Ends a legacy of almost 30 years of having one in my town in one location or another.  Only 2 left in CT now: Windsor, and (oddly enough) Chaplin.

Blimpie has been gone for several years here. We only have Subway , Firehouse, and Casey's General Store

Blimpie is a step below Subway, and Subway is already the bottom step.

[jp the roadgeek]

Friendly's is done.  It has to be.  Too much competition in the markets it once dominated.  I can get the same style of food at a better quality elsewhere.  Maybe Dean Foods will buy the rest of the restaurant assets and use their stores for ice cream only.  Their ice cream is good, IMO.

A bunch of them just closed "temporarily"  due to the health crisis, including Manchester, Avon, Wethersfield, and the one on CT 372 in Plainville.  The ones in Southington on Queen St (CT 10) and the Berlin Turnpike in Newington will remain open for take out only.

[cl94]

Friendly's is done.  It has to be.  Too much competition in the markets it once dominated.  I can get the same style of food at a better quality elsewhere.  Maybe Dean Foods will buy the rest of the restaurant assets and use their stores for ice cream only.  Their ice cream is good, IMO.

A bunch of them just closed "temporarily"  due to the health crisis, including Manchester, Avon, Wethersfield, and the one on CT 372 in Plainville.  The ones in Southington on Queen St (CT 10) and the Berlin Turnpike in Newington will remain open for take out only.

The local Friendly's locations are all "temporarily closed" and this was a market where they once had a location in every shopping area. Hell, there were places where 2 existed within a mile!

[RobbieL2415]

Friendly's is done.  It has to be.  Too much competition in the markets it once dominated.  I can get the same style of food at a better quality elsewhere.  Maybe Dean Foods will buy the rest of the restaurant assets and use their stores for ice cream only.  Their ice cream is good, IMO.

A bunch of them just closed "temporarily"  due to the health crisis, including Manchester, Avon, Wethersfield, and the one on CT 372 in Plainville.  The ones in Southington on Queen St (CT 10) and the Berlin Turnpike in Newington will remain open for take out only.

The local Friendly's locations are all "temporarily closed" and this was a market where they once had a location in every shopping area. Hell, there were places where 2 existed within a mile!

Yea, you'd have one in the mall and another just outside it.

[briantroutman]

When I saw this thread pop up again after a number of years, it seemed vaguely familiar, but my first thought was ""˜...one foot in the grave'? What idiot came up with that title?"  And behold: The idiot was me!

Blimpie

I have never had a sandwich from Blimpie, and though I'm sure I have passed by several of their locations over the years, the only one I truly recall seeing was barely three feet of counter space inside a crummy, hard luck convenience store. That forever tainted my image of that chain, even if any such thing as a "nice, freestanding Blimpie"  ever existed. At some point years later, the Blimpie space was rebranded (with seemingly no other changes) as with the generic name "Subs Now" , suggesting that whatever the Blimpie association offered to the franchisee was negligible in the first place.

That crummy convenience store was a Uni-Mart–which itself is either a dead, dying, or zombie chain, depending on how you look at it. Uni-Mart was at one time a fairly solid chain of 400+ compact, middle-of-the road convenience stores. The company was based in State College and carved out a niche in the 1980s in small central Pennsylvania cities and rural areas unserved by 7-Eleven or other national brands. (This was back when Sheetz was itself a typical corner convenience store and had limited geographical reach.)

'80s Uni-Marts were fairly decent when new–more or less a carbon copy of a 7-Eleven-type store of that era–but all locations suffered from a lack of reinvestment and maintenance, and they became dingy and threadbare after just a handful of years. By the mid '90s, most Uni-Marts were rather depressing places, and when Sheetz's seemingly palatial stores began appearing, they were a revelation in comparison. Uni-Mart countered with an updated logo and a new Sheetz-like superstore format, but the owners hardly seemed committed. The chain's backbone remained aging stores in declining neighborhoods. The brand eventually changed hands and went bankrupt. The current owners of the trademark list 24 stores (most if not all of them not original Uni-Marts), although I know of several original Uni-Marts still doing business using the trademark–apparently as independents.

[cl94]

Friendly's is done.  It has to be.  Too much competition in the markets it once dominated.  I can get the same style of food at a better quality elsewhere.  Maybe Dean Foods will buy the rest of the restaurant assets and use their stores for ice cream only.  Their ice cream is good, IMO.

A bunch of them just closed "temporarily"  due to the health crisis, including Manchester, Avon, Wethersfield, and the one on CT 372 in Plainville.  The ones in Southington on Queen St (CT 10) and the Berlin Turnpike in Newington will remain open for take out only.

The local Friendly's locations are all "temporarily closed" and this was a market where they once had a location in every shopping area. Hell, there were places where 2 existed within a mile!

Yea, you'd have one in the mall and another just outside it.

Yup. My favorite example is the shopping malls in Albany. Colonie Center and Crossgates Mall (a couple miles apart) both had one, plus there was one on the street outside of both malls. So you'd have 4 within 5-10 minutes of travel time. All have since closed. Queensbury/Glens Falls had 2 as well (1 just outside of the mall, 1 on US 9 a mile or two away), one of which has closed.

[jp the roadgeek]

Friendly's is done.  It has to be.  Too much competition in the markets it once dominated.  I can get the same style of food at a better quality elsewhere.  Maybe Dean Foods will buy the rest of the restaurant assets and use their stores for ice cream only.  Their ice cream is good, IMO.

A bunch of them just closed "temporarily"  due to the health crisis, including Manchester, Avon, Wethersfield, and the one on CT 372 in Plainville.  The ones in Southington on Queen St (CT 10) and the Berlin Turnpike in Newington will remain open for take out only.

The local Friendly's locations are all "temporarily closed" and this was a market where they once had a location in every shopping area. Hell, there were places where 2 existed within a mile!

Yea, you'd have one in the mall and another just outside it.

Yup. My favorite example is the shopping malls in Albany. Colonie Center and Crossgates Mall (a couple miles apart) both had one, plus there was one on the street outside of both malls. So you'd have 4 within 5-10 minutes of travel time. All have since closed. Queensbury/Glens Falls had 2 as well (1 just outside of the mall, 1 on US 9 a mile or two away), one of which has closed.

We had a case of that with two locations within a half mile of each other and neither was in a mall.  About 30 years ago, Friendly's acquired a local chain called Farm Shop, and converted the locations to Friendly's.  This included one in Southington, CT about a half mile north of the (still) existing one on CT 10 just the other side of the I-84 interchange.  It remained this way for several years.  The converted Farm Shop location eventually closed and was replaced by Bertucci's, and has since been replaced (just before the pandemic) by Plan B Burger (a very popular local chain). 

[US71]

Not quite one foot in the grave, but Steak n Shake is close. The quality isn't what it used to be and rumors abound about high franchise fees.

[Rothman]

Not quite one foot in the grave, but Steak n Shake is close. The quality isn't what it used to be and rumors abound about high franchise fees.

Have there been a lot of closures?