‘It’s a real shame.’ Why a nearly 50-year-old restaurant on Fresno’s Blackstone has closed
You can’t get a chocolate-dipped cone at the Foster’s Freeze at Blackstone and Barstow avenues in Fresno anymore.
The restaurant has closed for good.
The building with retro metal architecture and neon lights is empty now, all its seating removed. The business has been at that location for nearly nine years and operated in a different location before that since 1974.
What happened?
The restaurant was facing the same challenges most restaurants are, said Don Beiderwell, one of the franchisees who owns this Foster’s Freeze and several others in town.
It survived COVID-19, thanks to its drive-thru, he noted.
But now labor costs are rising and the prices of food and other supplies are skyrocketing, he noted.
“It’s a brutal environment right now,” he said of restaurants. “It’s tough.”
The restaurant had been subleasing the space from another entity. When that agreement expired and it was time to renegotiate a new lease, the rent the landlord wanted was just too much, he said.
“The rent was high enough,” Beiderwell said. “It was going to be going up, not down. It doesn’t make it a viable business at this time.”
It’s not that the landlord was being greedy, said Beiderwell, adding that business was looking at about a 20% increase in rent.
But “sales weren’t great” at that location, and faced with another increasing expenses, the math just didn’t work out, he said.
“It’s a real shame,” he said.
That restaurant first opened at First Street and Barstow Avenue, in what is now a Triangle Drive In Burgers.
While restaurants often evolve with the times, Foster’s Freeze is more of a classic. It’s kept its retro vibe over the years, with its waving, smiling ice cream cone mascot.
Unlike other soft-serve with swirled sharp edges, Foster’s kept its rounded dollops of ice cream atop its cones. Burgers, sandwiches and fried goodies still make up the menu.
Foster’s has 64 remaining locations open in California.
The workers were offered jobs at other locations in town, which are doing well, Beiderwell said.
“We’ve been here a long time and we expect to be here for a while,” he said.
This story was originally published January 19, 2023 at 4:28 PM.
