EAST LONGMEADOW – The Friendly’s restaurant at 562 N. Main St. recently reopened after a three weeks of renovations to the kitchen and dining room.

Ryan Hanifan, 26, general manager of the Friendly’s location and a lifelong East Longmeadow resident, told Reminder Publications the kitchen and dining room hadn’t been updated in years.

 “They normally don’t do the kitchen and the dining room all at the same time when they renovate, so that’s why it took so long,” he explained.  

Hanifan described the restaurant as “cozy” and as a local gathering spot in which many residents and people from Sixteen Acres in Springfield and Longmeadow are regular customers.

One of the goals of the renovation was learning how to utilize the restaurant’s small footprint in a more economical way by allowing for faster service, he noted.

“They added a lot of things to our kitchen to help us do that and then they added the little patio outside, which will be good in the summer,” Hanifan said.

The dining room features new tabletops, cushions, windows, and Friendly’s themed wallpaper that highlights the history of the local restaurant chain, he added.  

He added he started working at the Friendly’s restaurant location in Longmeadow at the age of 16 as a dishwasher before working his way up to a server, followed by a shift supervisor, and then a manager.

“I was a part-time manager for a long time in this location and the old general manager got transferred to a higher volume store and they asked him to recommend someone and he recommended me.”

He started working as the general manager of the East Longmeadow location in May, he noted.

Hanifan said there were bleak times working at Friendly’s when the company filed for bankruptcy in 2011 when many stores were closing, but today things are much more optimistic.

“They’ve obviously renovated almost all the locations we have open now,” he added. “We have a lot of the regulars I used to see at other stores like Sixteen Acres, Cooley Street, [and] Longmeadow. They come here now, so we’re doing a lot of business in this store. “They’ve done really well with editing the menus and making sure that they have the right amount of service [and] the right type of service. There’s been a big focus on that lately. The food’s kind of simpler. They took some things off [the menu] to try to make the prep and cook time quicker. They’ve been doing a lot of things since the bankruptcy to really streamline it and I think they’ve done a good job.”

When asked whether business has improved since the renovations were completed, he stated Friendly’s was offering a $2 burger and Fribble combo the reopening week, which caused the location to become “insanely busy.”  

He added, “We have a lot of regulars and stuff so I try to be in the dining room as much as I can talking to people. I haven’t had a lot of complaints. Everyone likes [the renovation]. We waited a long time. It was worth the wait because we got a lot of stuff that other stores didn’t.”

Hanifan said the locating is seeking to hire people at this time.

For more information visit www.friendlys.com/about/careers.