MANSFIELD – Friendly Ice Cream Corp. today is opening its first Friendly’s Express, a new unit of “fast casual” restaurants the company hopes will boost its sagging revenue.
The new restaurants, which are somewhat similar to Panera Bread Co. cafés, will have limited menus of sandwiches, hamburgers and ice cream. Customers will order from a counter and have their food delivered in six to eight minutes.
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The first location, in the new Mansfield Marketplace plaza near Interstate 495 on School Street, is about one-third the size of a traditional Friendly’s restaurant, The Boston Globe reported yesterday. It has 42 seats inside and 32 more on the patio.
The Wilbraham, Mass.-based company said the average customer visit will last 25 minutes at Friendly’s Express, compared with 45 minutes at a traditional Friendly’s.
“This concept allows our customers to enjoy our great food in a short time period that fits their busy lifestyles,” Jim Sullivan, Friendly’s vice president of franchising and development, said in a statement. “The concept works for our company because it allows us to expand rapidly into new real estate formats, while offering franchisees a property with a lower startup cost and shorter turnaround time.”
Friendly’s annual revenue slid from $691.72 million in 2004 to $642.14 million last year. The company was founded in 1935 in Springfield, Mass., and acquired in 2007 by the private equity firm Sun Capital Partners.
Friendly’s Express has been in development for more than year, according to the company. Sullivan told The Sun Chronicle the company plans to open a second Friendly’s Express in either the Providence or Boston market later this year, with five more locations to follow in 2010, one of which will be in Providence, according to Nation’s Restaurant News.
Additional information is available at Friendlys.com.
