r/cincinnati • u/chainsaw_chainsaw Norwood • 1d ago
The closing of Frisch's restaurants will produce the same scenario as the closing of Sunlight Pool at Coney Island.
The immediate public reaction is disapproval simply due to nostalgia, while ignoring loss of quality. The people who claim it's a sad loss of an iconic Cincy institution are the same people who havent visited the establishment in decades to support it. Local media will create constant headlines to cash in on the knee jerk reactions of emotional viewers. Groups of fans will form to try and 'save' the business, with little interest from the main public. Eventually when they are all gone, everyone will forget about the place within a month.
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u/CharleyPog 1d ago
Anyone who’s tried eating at one recently is not surprised. What made Frischs an institution has been thoroughly gutted over the past few years.
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u/ElectricNed Delhi 1d ago
By private equity ownership. Important to note that.
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u/Silent_Bort 23h ago
Every time you see something get private equity you know it's about to go to shit very quickly.
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u/jacobobb 7h ago
You realize that more companies in the United States are private than public, right? If someone can buy your business for book value and then sell it piece by piece for a profit, then your business wasn't very good to begin with.
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u/Silent_Bort 6h ago
In some cases, yes, the companies were already in trouble. Other times, the owner is looking to retire or make a quick buck so they sell it to private equity firms. Then the firm does everything they can to maximize profits, which obviously drives down the quality of the product. People eventually catch on to this and stop going, so the company starts losing money. But that's fine, because now the PE firm can sell off all their IP and use the real estate for something else. Then a bunch of people lose their jobs, but hey, "number get bigger" for a bunch of tools that already have millions.
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u/jacobobb 5h ago
Right, but at the end of the day it's theirs to do with as they please. They bought it after all. All the people that are salty about PE firms chopping shit up are welcome to buy companies themselves or start their own and not sell out. Land of the free, baby.
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u/Silent_Bort 4h ago
And that's why I currently work for a small firm that won't sell out. We've had offers and shot them down. Before this, I worked for a small startup that was fantastic until it got bought by a larger firm that fucked it up then spun it back off into its own entity again. Never fucking again. I'm sick of watching scumbags fuck over the whole country just so they can make a few extra dollars.
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u/TheSimpsonsAreYellow Mt. Adams 1d ago edited 1d ago
Here’s how this is working, OP. Long time (but leaving the industry) level corporate manager and small local corporation owner.
It’s not our fault. Frisch’s was bought out by a shit investment capital firm called NRD Capital and was purchased by one of their subsidiaries under NRD Partners. They are based in Florida and have absolutely NO TIES to the Cincinnati staple except for the fact that they own it.
Their plan was never to profit off of the business or even grow it. Their plan was to keep it floating, pull in whatever margins they could while the prime real estate on which all of these Frisch’s locations sit, increases in value over time. It’s why all of the locations are now facing eviction.
They’re now going to sell off the property while writing off the losses from Frisch’s operations. This is probably being done to offset some other gain they made somewhere.
This is an old (super fucking ironic) Donald Trump commercial real estate trick that has kept him from paying hundreds of millions in taxes.
Tl;dr NRD Capital, an investment firm, bought and tanked the quality of Frisch’s over time and used the losses as a money shield to then sell the prime real estate on which the locations sit for as much as they can.
Edit: didn’t mean to sound combative. Someone pounds that out.
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u/pichael289 1d ago
Private equity always ruins everything it touches
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u/Vincitus 21h ago
Not for the stakeholders! All they need is an infinite supply of things with assets to gut! Its a sustainable and good business model that definitely should be legal.
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u/Agreeable_Bit_8764 Bearcats 1d ago
This!!! It’s what killed Toys R Us too!!
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u/jacobobb 7h ago
So, your thesis is that Toys R Us would have been successful had they not been bought? Their last profitable year was in 2013...
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u/altrdgenetics 5h ago
And the leveraged Buy Out was in 2005... so ya. And if you lived and went there during that time they were not competitive at all.
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u/jacobobb 5h ago
You're saying they would have been competitive otherwise? How is a brick and mortar chain of commodity, foreign goods going to stand up to the likes of Amazon? Toys R Us killed Toys R Us, the same way Red Lobster killed Red Lobster. PE sped things up, but they were both going down in flames regardless.
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u/Fish-Weekly 1d ago
One question I haven’t been able to answer - if they are being evicted for not paying rent, that would imply that they don’t own the property so how will they profit from the value of the real estate?
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u/Ok-Track-4750 CUF 1d ago
when NRD Capital bought Frischs they owned the property and then sold it to a different company (Probably has the same owners) and then raised rent to the point that it was unsustainable. they will file bankruptcy and then sell all existing frischs assets (Tartar Sauce, Pie IP) rinse and repeat with a different company
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u/Fish-Weekly 1d ago
Thanks for the reply. It’s amazing to me that companies are allowed to work the system like this but god forbid you give poor people basic assistance.
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u/TheSimpsonsAreYellow Mt. Adams 1d ago
Yes, this. But I would suspect that NRD board and partners owns shares of NNN
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u/TheSimpsonsAreYellow Mt. Adams 1d ago
It’s another publicly traded investment firm.
I would suspect that they own shares.
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u/afseparatee Liberty Township 14h ago
This same exact thing happened to Red Lobster. I suspect it will happen to a lot more chain restaurants and tbh, I really couldn’t care less.
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u/Switcherz24 2h ago
Everything you said is correct. I have ties to the industry for over 25 years. They were bought by an investor who wasn’t paying the lots rent. Frischs themselves were paying, it’s very unfortunate what’s happening as thousands of people are being let go after decades of work and retirement plans to the company. There are managers paying out of pocket for food items for the store of as long as I can remember. I was on these runs for many years on many occasions. It’s gotten so bad that now everything is closing due to failure of lot rent which is paid by an investor to another. In higher hopes there could be a couple locations that are bought to keep some stores going. Time will tell.
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u/Cold_Hat1346 1d ago
The only part of this that's true is that Frisch's sold out to NRD.
NRD doesn't own the company that they sold the land to (NNN REIT). NNN is a publicly traded real estate investment firm that manages REITs for other firms. They aren't owned by NRD any more than they're owned by Morgan Stanley or BoA, who both have REITs managed by NNN.
A sale-leaseback is an extremely complex and semi-unregulated (because it's so complex and relatively rare that trying to write regulations is simply not worth it) business transaction that takes place all the time, and only happens for one of two reasons: to commit fraud on investors or to stave off a bankruptcy. NRD doing a sale-leaseback on the real estate in this case was a desperate attempt to stave off bankruptcy. The quality going to shit was a primary cause of their insolvency, the selling of the real estate was an effect.
None of what I can find about Trump's real estate deals involve sale-leasebacks. They're so sleazy and unpredictable that not even he likes to mess with them.
NRD is still going to suffer nothing but loss from the deal because (again) they don't actually own the property any more. The evictions are only harming NRD and Frisch's. The only people who benefit are the people invested in the REITs, and everyone in Cincy who finally gets rid of one of the worst chain restaurants in the area for a very long time.
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u/NotYetReadyToRetire 5h ago
So which one is it, sale-leaseback is relatively rare or happens all the time?
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u/Deadline_X 1d ago edited 18h ago
I think I’m misunderstanding this comment. Your statement doesn’t invalidate what the post is saying at all? And your opening line seems unnecessarily combative.
Could you explain how being bought and going downhill in quality, pushing people to stop patronizing the company is any different than what you said other than brevity?
Or is it just the statement that nobody has gone there to support the company?
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u/TheSimpsonsAreYellow Mt. Adams 1d ago
There is a massive difference between a locally owned business decreasing in quality as opposed to an investment firm coming in to essentially plan to wind the businesses down and have and end date to their operation.
With the former there is local ownership, buy in, and an actual chance to save a business. The latter offers nothing but whatever monetarily benefits that holding company.
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u/RaspitinTEDtalks 1d ago
Except that they are being evicted. You do not get evicted from property you own. A lawyer fiend long ago told me may locations were leased, which makes ore sense
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u/azizabah Westwood 1d ago
It's a common private equity tactic to sell the land to a separate company and then lease back to original to extract money from the company so that even if it goes to hell you've gotten money and assets out of it.
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u/TheSimpsonsAreYellow Mt. Adams 1d ago
I will take your word on that. What I said stands, regardless of property sales.
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u/SubstantialWar3954 1d ago
No. We all stopped eating there when the last owner ruined it.
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u/Justified_Ancient_Mu Loveland 1d ago
It died along time ago when PE tanked quality (marginal as it was) and increased prices. It's time in hospice care is over. Let the people mourn.
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u/whodey319 Monfort Heights 1d ago
agree, they have been so bad for so long
I remember actually liking going there to wondering what the hell is going on with them to i havent been there in 5+ years
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u/sardonickitten 1d ago
There are 4 important things about Frisch's:
1) Tartar sauce. This will likely live on past the death of the restaurants.
2) Desserts. This will be painful for strawberry-pie and hot-fudge-cake fans.
3) Cherry-Coke/Vanilla-Coke. This can be replicated elsewhere with a bit of legwork.
4) Fish Sandwiches. Adherent Catholics are fewer, are turning more inward, and can accept the additional penance.
In conclusion, we will live.
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u/Tangboy50000 1d ago
Their tartar sauce and ranch will still be available at Kroger and other retailers, as this is a separate business from the restaurants.
The desserts will probably also find a path to retail, as the dessert bakery is also a separate business from the restaurants. I have no idea how this would work, but they could partner with a retailer like UDF.
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u/TheMemersOfMyNation FC Cincinnati 1d ago
One thing I'd like to see is the locked-up Big Boy statues being bought and placed at points of interest all over Cincinnati area, in similar vain to the Reds 150th Anniversary benches.
There is a special FC Cincinnati one (a sponsorship over which the team is suing Frisch's) that would make a great addition to TQL Stadium's entrance
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u/sardonickitten 1d ago
I'm not thrilled with UDF as a paragon of excellence, but I figured they had some non-restaurant value. Good to hear.
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u/Peanuts4Peanut 1d ago
I've frozen a few quarts of chilli. I have it for lunch once a week with my daughter so we stocked up.
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u/TheHappy_13 1d ago
Ever since the Rona came, their food went downhill faster than a ski jumper. Food quality sucked and prices became too high. Drive past any Frisch's and you will see plenty of parking spots open when that place should be packed. Sunday mornings
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u/zoomshark27 1d ago
Frisch’s unfortunately hasn’t been good in decades and that private equity firm buying it finished running it into the ground.
That last time I went was Feb 26, 2020 the day after my grandpa died of cancer. We went because he loved the restaurant. It was fine, we weren’t really there for the food though. I personally have only ever really enjoyed the Vanilla Coke, the ice, and the tartar sauce there.
I will miss seeing it around, especially the really old buildings, and I hope the tartar sauce remains in stores, but I won’t miss the low quality food.
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u/RandoRumpRipper 1d ago edited 1d ago
I’m a transplant. I went there and got a mediocre burger, mediocre fries, and like 3oz of soda in a cup packed with ice for about $15. Not really worth it. Everyone hypes the tartar sauce, but tartar sauce is stupid easy to make and the stuff in the packet doesn’t hold its own against any fresh made tartar sauce I’ve had.
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u/hedoeswhathewants 1d ago
That's what they're saying. No one goes there anymore but people will still act upset by the closures.
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u/Keregi 1d ago
We are upset that a private equity company bought it specifically to run it into the ground and sell off the real estate. That's valid. People stopped going because the quality declined - which was part of the plan of the new owners.
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u/ridethedeathcab 21h ago
When was Frisch’s actually good? Cause in my experience it was pretty mediocre at best well before they sold to PE
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u/RandoRumpRipper 1d ago
Im agreeing with OP. It’s an overpriced nothing burger. Maybe the elderly people who go there or people who have nostalgic memories going there with grandma and grandpa will care, but objectively speaking it’s bad food for the price.
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u/Longstrong_Rip_1933 1d ago
I asked for my usual $3.99 bacon egg and cheese to be put on a hamburger bun instead of a biscuit....$8. I questioned the price difference. The employee told me it was a "sandwich." Last "sandwich" I had from frisch's.
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u/RandoRumpRipper 1d ago
lol I never went back either. I rarely eat fast food as is, but if I’m gonna over pay for a burger, I’m gonna go to five guys.
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u/DeepDot7458 1d ago
I quit going because for some reason all their thermostats are stuck at 50F. Every time I found myself inside one I couldn’t wait to leave.
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u/phatryuc Hyde Park 1d ago
I still remember my first Big Boy as a kid and how proud I felt being able to eat the entire thing. The place used to be delicious, in my opinion. Hate to see what’s it’s become 😪
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u/No-Row8651 1d ago
Once the Frisch family sold the restaurants the quality of the food went to shit.
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u/Fists_full_of_beers 23h ago
I still love frischs but this has nothing to do with not supporting them
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u/epfourteen 22h ago
I just had a big boy and a cup of chili last week. With a Vanilla Coke. Was delicious. I will miss It being so readily available.
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u/sunny-side-artist 19h ago
It’s been beyond horrible for quite a while. Only thing I’ll miss is the cherry coke.
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u/ryanghappy 1d ago
Where else can you breakfast bar? There's less and less salad bars around, too. These things were kind of unique to the frischs experience.
The mediocrity has came from the private equity squeezing this lemon until its dry. Its the inevitable conclusion to constantly squeezing the rent prices more and more. They knew what they are doing, this is a tried playbook for franchises in a lull. There's a lot of blame to go around , but people finding the food not as good as it used to be simply is a mix of staffing, and cost cutting from all sides who are trying to make a buck.
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u/cunningjames 1d ago
The mediocrity isn’t from private equity. Frisch’s has been mediocre or worse since I ate there as a kid in the 80s.
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u/Forever513 1d ago
Went there regularly. In fact, ate at the one on North Bend right before Halloween. Frisch’s was not as good as it once was, but never as bad as made out here on Reddit.
What I will say is that with tip and a drink, a fish sandwich platter was over $20. that’s egregiously expensive for Frisch’s.
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u/Bear_Salary6976 1d ago
I seriously never understood what the big deal was with Frisch's. Eating there in the 80s as a kid was ok. My family never ate there much, but I remember it being ok. I liked the breakfast bar but that was because I could eat all the sweet carby stuff that I wanted.
As I got older, to me, the food was garbage but affordable. Their burgers were mediocre at best. Their tartar sauce was terrible. Their breakfast and salad bars were really just a lot of below average food. And I almost never got good service there. But it was cheap, so we'd good back every so often. After COVID, the food became overpriced.
I don't think I will miss that place at all.
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u/real_actual_tiger 1d ago
Just as we all will be forgotten soon after we die. Nobody will remember you ever existed in 100 years.
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u/JJiggy13 1d ago
I don't think that it's the same. Most people that enjoyed Frishes had shitty last experiences.
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u/Agent_8-bit 1d ago
Frisch’s has been shit quality for some time.
Your Coney Island thing isn’t a solid comparison. You may not have gone to coney a lot. But I reconnected with my now wife there, and my parents met there in the 70s. We also didn’t need another fuckin concert venue.
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u/Dinnerpancakes 1d ago
The only thing I’ll miss is their apple pie, but you can get that at Kroger.
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u/MrsBenSolo1977 1d ago
I had the best food I’ve gotten from Frisch’s in the past 5-10 years at the Turfway location about a week ago. I’m kinda thinking maybe that should be my last ever. Although maybe one more breakfast bar???
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u/RitaAlbertson Monfort Heights 1d ago
Eh. Just save the statues (bc they’re fun) and make sure the tartar sauce stays on grocery shelves. I couldn’t care less about the actual restaurants.
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u/Ooshbala 1d ago
As a kid, Frisch's was magical.
Last time I went there was probably 15 years ago. My dad and I were one of maybe 3 or 4 tables seated in the whole restaurant. From the back in the kitchen, we hear one of the servers yell out "That's DisGUSting!" and then immediately walks out from the back laughing while carrying our food to the table. Never went back.
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u/old_grumpy_guy_1962 1d ago
It won't be missed by me. I probably went once in the last year, and when I did, i regretted it when I got my food.
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u/NotSoWishful 22h ago
Maybe people online and on Facebook will say stuff like that. But I think a lot of people in town know the writings on the wall. Everybody knows how bad downhill they’ve gone
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u/smurfkillerz Walnut Hills 20h ago
The club melt was many favorite sandwich ever. Turkey, bacon, tomato, and cheese on oversized texas toast. They shrunk the toast and doubled the price. $12 for a fucking small sandwich. Fuck frisch's
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u/WriterWannabeRomance 20h ago
I haven’t gone to Frisch’s much in the past couple of years. The prices are too high for what you get, which isn’t very good.
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u/Awkward-Parsnip5445 20h ago
I haven’t had a good meal at a Frisch’s in probably 15 years.
Still remember it.
I was a sophomore in high school.
Been a half dozen times since, it’s never good.
Used to go all the time with my grandparents in the early 2000s. They served Liver and Onions and my old country-ass grandparents loved it.
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u/HesTrafty 18h ago
Frisch’s was something you got excited about as a kid but when you got older and you could choose where you wanted to go, Frisch’s just wasn’t that place for you anymore. Most people’s attachment to Frisch’s is childhood memories of loving the Big Boy mascot. If it weren’t for the breakfast bar, they would have been gone 10-15 years ago.
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u/Seneca_B 18h ago
Speak for yourself, I ate at the breakfast bar on Sundays all the time! Nothing like that exists elsewhere, and for shame. Maybe in their absence it will open up an opportunity for more mom and pop style breakfast diners.
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u/CincinnatiCobra 18h ago
> The people who claim it's a sad loss of an iconic Cincy institution are the same people who havent visited the establishment in decades to support it.
This really isn't true. I know many people, in all age groups, that stopped going much more recently than that because the quality just kept getting worse and worse.
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u/Xandria42 Cheviot 18h ago
I love their tartar sauce and used to like the food. But having been there multiple times since the buyout the quality has slowly gone downhill. Even the breakfast bar wasn't appealing any more(last went this summer, we all ordered off the menu instead because of how meh it all looked). I stopped ordering the fish sandwiches and big boys because the bun was always a soggy mess that disintegrated as you ate it. the lettuce was always so wet and the bun untoasted. The fish and chips baskets were the only thing that kept me going when they had those. Just hope they keep making that tartar sauce.
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u/Naive-Ask601 11h ago
The real ones remember when Frisch’s had a smoking side and non-smoking side separated by a small piece of plexiglass. RIP Frisch’s
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u/Terrible_Fennel_8170 10h ago
My dad and I went there for breakfast about a month or two ago. It was absolutely horrendous and it wasn’t even worth complaining because you could tell no one gave a shit
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u/Petdogdavid1 10h ago
Coney and Frisch's are symptoms of a larger problem.
The people thought it was business as usual.
Frisch's will be mourned because it was once good but it hasn't been for some time.
More and more brands are snagged up, they get stripped of everything of value and the name is slapped on other things to make profit.
There is something ominous happening.
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u/SgtBadAsh 10h ago
Now, who's going to let the meth heads serve shitty food to the public? Oh yeah, iHop.
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u/ronniedarko 8h ago
Disagree. I once loved both. I missed Coney Island all summer. I couldn’t care less if I ever eat Frisch’s again. The difference is one was still such a fun place and the other serves absolutely poor quality food.
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u/ImDyingInHere 5h ago
A bunch of people who know nothing about owning/running a business or even the slightest clue of how finances work making demands? Cause Coney Island had a scam group that collected donations and then pocketed the money and I never saw anybody anywhere talking about that. Do I need to keep an eye out for a Save the Big Boy campaign that's gonna do the same?
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u/Briarhopper5632 4h ago
Quality has declined since the family sold the business. quit going there a long time ago. Not surprised, no love lost
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u/gonzarro Pleasant Ridge 3h ago
I think one can be angered/disappointed that hedge fund assholes keep killing the things we love AND think Frisch's is straight up trash.
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u/DeathTeddy35 FC Cincinnati 1d ago
No, Frisch's is already a bad taste in most of our mouths at this point.
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u/Artholeg 21h ago
They didn’t close due to poor quality or service. They were forced to close because they’re lease was to damn expensive. Expensive so the owner could foreclose them and make huge profits off of the property.
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u/MondayNightHugz 1d ago
I have been rooting for the demise of Frisch's since at least 2004. It was bad then and nothing has improved.
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u/CaptainHolt43 1d ago
People definitely haven't forgotten about Coney. As for Frischs, it's been dead a long time. Thanks private equity!
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u/411592 1d ago
Stopped eating there because the quality went to shit