Photo of notice on the door: 6p1.jpg
http://www.rutlandherald.com/apps/pbcsi.dll/bilde?Site=RH&Date=20140107&Category=NEWS02&ArtNo=701079929 Restaurant workers from Massachusetts pack a car with equipment as Friendly’s Restaurant at the Springfield Shopping Plaza closes its doors after more than 30 years of operation. Photo: LEN EMERY PHOTO Published January 7, 2014 in the Rutland Herald Friendly’s closes abruptly in Springfield By SUSAN SMALLHEER Staff Writer SPRINGFIELD — There was no ‘‘happy ending’’ at the Friendly’s restaurant in the Springfield Shopping Plaza. The family restaurant abruptly closed its doors Sunday night, with no plans to reopen, and notified its employees Monday morning that they no longer had a job, said one employee’s daughter. Alyssa Stevens, a spokesman for Friendly’s, said Monday the restaurant’s lease in the Springfield Shopping Plaza had expired, and that was the reason for the closing. “Friendly’s Ice Cream, LLC., announced the closing of its Friendly’s location in Springfield, Vermont. The restaurant located at 2 Chester Road in the Springfield Shopping Plaza will cease operations, effective immediately. ‘‘This closing was due to the expiration of the restaurant’s lease. Friendly’s in Springfield values its guests and thanks them for their patronage,” read the brief statement. A sign was posted on the front door of the restaurant, announcing it was closed. Stevens said about 20 employees had lost their jobs as a result, and she said the people were free to apply for jobs at other Friendly’s Restaurants in the area — including restaurants in Brattleboro, Keene, N.H., and West Lebanon, N.H. Julia Cole has been a waitress at Friendly’s in Springfield for almost 30 years, her daughter Jeri Cole said. Her mother received a call Monday morning saying she didn’t have to come in to work and that the restaurant was closed. The lack of notice was inhumane, said Jeri Cole, who herself used to be a waitress at the same restaurant as her mother. Her mother, who she said is in her 60s, will not drive to West Lebanon or Keene or Brattleboro for a job at another Friendly’s restaurant. “What is she going to do?” she said. Her mother liked the restaurant and liked working there, her daughter said. And the restaurant was busy, which makes its closing puzzling. Her mother is stunned, she said, and very upset, but she’s going in to work today to help clean the restaurant, against her daughter’s advice. “She doesn’t know what else to do,” she said. Friendly’s has had financial troubles in recent years, and has closed dozens of restaurants. But Stevens said Monday’s closing was limited to the Springfield restaurant. The Friendly’s restaurant had been located in the Springfield Shopping Plaza since 1986, according to Gene Guy, who sold a small chain of restaurants, the Idlenot Family Restaurants, to Friendly’s then. The Idlenot Family Restaurants had originally been affiliated with the Springfield-based Idlenot Farm Dairy in North Springfield, with Guy, his brother, and Roland Aldrich of Idlenot Dairy owning the restaurant. Guy, a Springfield businessman, said he was perplexed by the closing, because whenever he was in the restaurant it seemed busy. James Young, a family spokesman for the Young family who owns Springfield Realty, which in turn owns the Springfield Shopping Plaza, didn’t return a call seeking comment. 2014TopNewStories
prices had gone up (like most businesses) but the quality of the food was not as good; the older lady server was excellent at her job; but one day I waited several minutes to be seated while two male employees had what appeared to be a heated discussion, kept looking my way and left me standing, until I walked out the door, complained to a manager who was sitting on the bench with a girl and a cigarette and showed very little interest in my complaint; I decided to do myself a favor and not bother with the place again; it's never been the same since the Idlenot days anyway.
ReplyDeleteAny business could learn a lesson here. If you're going to allow employees to smoke, create a smoking area out of sight of the customers. Better yet, food service - no smoking - period.
ReplyDeleteThe employer owes the employee pay for the job done. That's it. They don't owe them anything more. The employee owes the employer an honest days labor in return for the pay received. Neither owes the other anything more. The days of working for one employer for your life time is over.
Bryant, Fellows, Aubuchon - none had any warning - get your things and get out. Stinks, but that's the way it is. Deep breath - get started looking for another job. "I was looking for a job when I found this one."
I think Friendlys did a good thing. The only waiter that was decent a was Alex always polite and knew his stuff. The rest all seemed to act like pill heads including management. This Friendlys use to be good, but it's frustrating when you go to a family restaurant and all the staff will be outside smoking and talking smack.
ReplyDeleteAs a business owner I can identify with the above comments. The labor pool in Springfield from which to hire ambitious, reliable, employees is non existent. Good people are not out of work. No one wants to relocate here. And those too lazy to work have learned well, a comfortable lifestyle on disability is all too easy here in Vermont.
ReplyDeleteYoung people, once the core of labor force growth are no longer a consideration. The majority of SHS graduates are from a single parent households with no positive role model. Even our Howard Dean Tech Ctr. refuses to encourage culinary students and others to pursue gainful employment as part of their program. Think not? Ask to see the job postings on public display there.
When was the last time you saw young, high school kid hustling his butt to earn college money or just build a future? Let's not forget, almost a third of young adults here are functionally illiterate, unemployable, high school drop outs. All adds up to a lousy place to run a business.
Sadly, I have to agree with you. I couldn't of said it any better
DeleteI think you need to look a little harder. My child is a recent graduate who is holding down a full time job and taking three classes at CCV in order to transfer to a campus in the fall. I see this "anomaly" every day.
DeleteI think that you need to look a little harder at the statistics. The kids that drop out don't go on to do anything and the kids who do graduate mostly end up doing nothing as well. There ARE a small percent who go on to further education and to those kids I have to pat their parents on the back for doing a good job. But the percentage of kids doing nothing surely outweighs the ones who are doing something. Sorry to say. Maybe as a community we see those kids who are doing nothing, having children, doing drugs, living off welfare and are on the police radar for robbery/stealing. May not be kids right out of high school but still young kids in the early 20's. I can almost bet that all those we see and hear about never went on to further the education.
DeleteSo we should cut the school budget to teach them a lesson?
DeleteI am a SHS student, and I would just like to say that I am aware of many of my peers and myself working all of their school vacations, after school, and every weekend just to save up for college. Not only are we working as much as we can, but many of us find the time to pass honor classes with A's or B's. I can say that not only do I do well in school, and work as often as possible, I also participate in many educational trips sponsored by SHS and the River Valley Technical Center.
DeleteSo in the end I would like to ask you to think before you write things about the students at SHS, because yes we have had students drop out before, but what school hasn't? And yes we have students who struggle with reading and writing, but that doesn't make them "functionally illiterate, unemployable, high school drop outs." Kids struggle, kids don't know what they want for their future, but I can tell you that all these people who are saying these negative things about the way we are educated and how, in simple terms, dumb we are does not help.
So if you want to see any of this change maybe you should open your eyes and see that most of us want a future we just don't know how to get there, so instead of bashing us for not knowing maybe you should show some support for the young adults in your community and help us get where we want to go.
9:37, great comments!
DeleteMy theory is that there is only one person who writes all the negative comments. I call him Alan Smithee (you could look him up). He does so for a number of reasons. Lot of free time, can't get anybody to listen to him (just like me!), has to work off his other irritations in a safe manner, the easiest thing to do is to opine without researching first, and so forth.
The sheer volume of his work gives readers the impression that he is 90% of the town's population, so they leave this blog with a bad taste in their mouth. And of course he forces people like you to go on the defensive.
Maybe there's some way Alan's energy could be put to good purpose, but right now, he's just the dog in the manger.
Who knows the bigger picture here? If Friendly's is operating on the current Wall Street model-- shareholder value-- rather than customer-based profits, it very often makes sense to close it even if it's making a profit. In the movie, "The Big One," the producer showed how American companies-- I remember the makers of Reese's pb cups and Nike-- were closing down factories and making more profits by moving overseas.
ReplyDeleteSuch decisions were based on commercial laws changed by the government at the behest of Wall Street. The logical outcome has been a Greed and Fear Index (formerly known as the Dow-Jones Index) of over 16,000, while-- what? 1.7 formerly-employed Americans still don't have a job and the Fed keeps pumping money into Wall Street hoping it will trickle down and improve the economy.
Capitalism used to work to the benefit of a lot more people than it does now. Hardly surprising the younger generation thinks much more highly of socialism...
Hey, no brainer here. And here's the big picture, Friendly's closed up. They own it, they decide. I don't hear them blaming anyone or pinning it on Wall Street or McDonalds. Maybe, just maybe they made a decision to close. I doubt they're moving to China, although we should ship more American restaurant's over there to offset all theirs here and Friendly's would be perfect punishment. I'm sitting here trying to figure out what a .7 formerly-employed America is (I'm guessing a Little Person). The younger generation is learning little to nothing about Capitalism in what are called Business classes or social studies at the High School level. They are learning about socialism and lining up for a handout (i.e. birth control in the nurses office). Friendly's closed, their decision.
DeleteIf you don't think that Chuck was trying to say that Friendly's is moving their business to China. He is just pointing out that most of the companies on Wall St have moved their operations overseas. While I don't have the exact data, one can make a pretty good assumption. Just look at just about every product you buy - the bottom says Made in China.
DeleteThank you Anon 2:54 !!! Finally a silent majority voice chimes in.
DeleteHey 3:34.....worried about every product you buy saying "Made in China'? The solution is simple.....stop buying products marked "Made in China". Voilà... Problem solved!
DeleteThere goes Chuck again. Capitalism is the only proven system that works in a free society! PERIOD! All you have to do is travel around the world and experience real live societal situations (not read onesided books or see a flick). Please, pick another system that has shown positive growth and economical stability other then capitalism. Tell me about Europe / Asia and South East Asia, China and tell me how wonderful things are there. I've lived and worked there...in all those places...so please, give me a model with a proven track record that improves peoples well beings and provides freedom. Go ahead,,I'm listening.. Please try and give only your own real life experiences...no stories that you may have read or movies that you have seen.
Delete2:54, it would help you to understand better how corporations operate these days. A provision in the Federal tax law gives CEO's a tax break if they "over-perform," which is to say when they exceed the income goal set by the board of directors (in general, composed of people whom the CEO recommended for membership; very congenial for the CEO).
DeleteThe CEO's very, very often do this not by seeing that the company provides better goods and services than the competition, but by cannibalizing the company. When Ross Johnson became CEO of RJ Reynolds, he launched a management buy-out effort that stripped the worker-stockholders' right to vote, enlisted KKR (one of the initial vulture capitalist firms) to work out a merger with of all things, Nabisco and walked away an even wealthier man. Of course, to pay for the complex and hideously ruinous financing involved, RJR went through massive downsizing. The movie "Barbarians at the Gates" doesn't begin to describe how bad it was; the book of the same name ends with "If the founder, R.J. Reynolds were to look down from Heaven on all this, he'd wonder, 'What does this have to do with business?' "
A friend of mine was a psychiatric nurse in CT who saw her CEO reap hundreds of thousands in additional pay by laying off scores of employees, stripping the hospital so bare that it lost a $14 million dollar wrongful death suit when a child died there. But he walked away a rich man.
So, where is Friendly's really coming from with this? What did it have for the last 5 years of P&L? Where has its income been coming from nationally-- downsizing, selling off assets, shutting down revenue producers (like Clark Forklift did with its factories)? And what's the CEO's income been like over that same period of time?
If you'd been living in Springfield before the shops closed, you'd probably understand this a bit better.
Chuck, bottom line... they (Friendly's) can do what ever they feel is right for their business. They have no moral obligation to remain in Springfield. I honestly doubt the CEO's salary was a factor in closing this location. There's far more behind your "story" of the wrongful death suit so we'll take that a face value. Most of us actually don't care what a CEO makes, only those who "hate the rich" seem to complain about a CEO's high compensation. If I like a companies product as a customer or am successfully padding my nest egg with their stock then the CEO can make as much as he/she is allowed by the board. It's called "Capitalism"... Yes Chuck, I used the evil "C" word.
DeleteChuck, to be clear Friendly's closed, their restaurant, their decision. Springfield will not be without food now, ice cream or a place to sit down and eat without ample parking. I think the movie Animal House showed this best when Dean Wormer put the fraternity on double secret probation after much food was wasted in a devastation food fight. They found a way to have a Toga Party and ruin an otherwise alumni type parade. And at the end of the movie it was interesting to see how their lives worked out. Seems to me you are very good at throwing darts the evil corporations. Here a corporation closes a store convincing you there is a wealthy person walking away at the expense of us grease eaters that visited the restaurant. If a local Mom & Pop closes you blame a corporation for pushing them out. Yet most restaurants left in this town are Mom & Pop and will benefit from this closure. Other than you and the person that seems to think my China comment was not sarcasm most of us are over it and eating elsewhere tonight.
DeleteJL machinist, the psych hospital was so understaffed the kid was left unattended for over 4 hours. If you'd like I can find out whether he committed suicide or died from unsupervised chelation therapy.
DeleteAnd you'll love this detail-- the winner of the suit (she got about two-thirds of the $14 million; the rest went to the lawyers) was the toxic mom, who not only was responsible for the life of abuse that put him there, but also had been barred from parental custody because of the abuse she inflicted on him. Enjoy THAT scenario!
J&L did you like what the ceo's did to your job? do you like the fact the tax payers are covering the pensions? they came with promises and left grinning all the way to the bank.
DeleteThe pensions are not taxpayer funded, they're employer/employee funded and the CEO didn't take my job away.
Deleteso who covers the pensions of a company that no longer exists?
DeleteTextron Lycoming acquired J&L and Textron Lycoming still exists.
DeleteDear Anonymous 1/7/14, 6:28 PM,
ReplyDeleteYou wrote "Even our Howard Dean Tech Ctr. refuses to encourage culinary students and others to pursue gainful employment as part of their program. Think not? Ask to see the job postings on public display there."
I believe you are making this statement about the River Valley Technical Center. Please contact the River Valley Technical Center and arrange for a visit I would be glad to share with you about our efforts to build our students employment skills, and where/how we post area job postings.
6:28 has described the Springfield norm very well, while 8:05 has aptly brought at least one exception to that norm to our attention. Yet, that one exception, while we are very glad for it, does not invalidate the norm.
ReplyDelete2:54, I have been asking what the back story is on this. When all the shops closed, we had no idea it was Wall Street playing with companies like they were checkers. When Neomi Lauritsen closed Morning Star it was not because she was going to use the proceeds to retire in Maui or Sun Valley, but Neomi was not a CEO.
ReplyDeleteIf there is a bigger story behind this Friendly's closing, you and I don't know it-- and like what Wall Street did to Precision Valley, it might be a small but vital story in a bigger scenario that will also dump on us. We ought to know.
"Send not to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee."
Although Friendly's is "mostly" recovered from their recent bankruptcy they're still modifying their footprint in the market. John Maguire (their CEO) has a few decades of successful restaurant operations experience under his belt (Panera Bread, Whole foods and Au Bon Pain Co to name a few). This is just another step in their climb out of the bankruptcy not some conspiracy by their CEO.
DeleteWere Friendly's a locally-owned (especially employee-owned) business, it would not be subject to the ups and downs of other restaurants affecting the bottom line of a national or international corporation. For Maguire, closing the Springfield Friendly's is just a matter of sliding another chip off the playing board; for the people who work there, it's a matter of survival.
DeleteOh well, the owners did what needed to be done. Deal with it.
DeleteRight, 11:23! Let's just pretend there's nothing we can do to keep the next Textron, Goldman Industrial Group or Unilever from playing with Springfield's businesses like they are tokens in a game. They treat us like peasants, so we might as well be peasants.
DeleteJust because that's the way things are, it doesn't mean they have to continue to be that way.
"People look at what is and ask, "Why?" I look at what could be and ask, "Why not?"
-- Robert Kennedy
It's not all about Springfield Chuck. There's an entire globe out there for consumers, employees and business to explore. Time to expand your mind a tad.
ReplyDeleteA prettily romantic conceit, 12:33. The fact is, the only time large groups of people voluntarily uproot themselves from all they've known and launch into an unknown and untested world is when they are refugees. I've written elsewhere of the fifteen or so factors that make it possible for individuals to uproot and transplant themselves successfully. Life is not a novel.
DeleteIt is neither stationary as well Chuck.
DeleteThey did have a smoking area in the back but they mostly smoked pot back there
ReplyDelete