The Barstool Fund - Flanigan's Boathouse
Up next: Flanigan's Boathouse (Conshohocken, PA)
At Flanigans, you will find great food, a fun atmosphere, an assortment of drafts on tap, and a wide variety of specialty bottles from around the world. They also have televisions throughout the restaurant and bar for you to watch your favorite sports teams.
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Reader Email
Dear Dave, Erika, and Barstool Sports,
Flanigan's Boathouse has been our family’s restaurant for 31 years. A staple in the heart of Conshohocken, just a few miles outside of Philadelphia, The Boathouse is not only my family's business and livelihood, The Boathouse is who we are. In the simplest of terms, at The Boathouse everyone is literally family. My Mom and Dad have become second parents to our staff, and the employees have become more like siblings.
Last year we lost our little brother Jake. The only boy with five older sisters, Jake literally grew up at The Boathouse. We all did. When your parents co-own a restaurant together, the kids tend to spend a lot of time there. I remember Jake would come into The Boathouse almost every day after school to sit at Table 4 and eat his cheesesteak with extra cheese, cheese fries and onion rings. Now at that table sits his obituary. We have lived our lives, the highlights and the heartbreaks, together at The Boathouse. When Jake died, the entire town came together for our family. Conshohocken has always supported The Boathouse, and we have always supported this town. My family has grown and lost together in this building.
Throughout this pandemic, we are again suffering a tremendous loss. So many restaurants have had to close their doors for good during this time. I cannot imagine losing The Boathouse. So many of our employees’ families rely on this restaurant to survive. We have taken a financial hit this year that seems impossible to recover from. We are doing everything we can think of to survive within the rules, and then the rules change or we are shut down again anyway. While the business has slowed down substantially, our bills have not. On top of the debt we have accumulated, my Dad recently took money out of his life insurance policy to keep our doors open. My parents have put everything into this business.
The governor has placed strict restrictions on restaurants. These restrictions make normal business nearly impossible. Every day we are forced to think of ways to keep our business afloat. We are stuck policing and enforcing rules instead of running our restaurant. As a well-known hometown sports bar, we have lost our normal crowds for March Madness, the entire NFL season, Thanksgiving Eve, and the holiday season. We haven’t had a normal weekend crowd since March. These losses are crippling to a business like ours.
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Flanigan's Boathouse is everything to us. I do not know what we will do if we do not survive as a business. My family has already faced heartbreaking, devastating, and unthinkable loss. My parents are the hardest-working people I know, and they deserve the chance to save the business that our family has dedicated the past 31 years to. One thing I know for sure is that no matter what, we will keep fighting. My family’s livelihood depends on it.
Thank you for your consideration and regardless of your decision, we appreciate all of your effort to help small businesses.
Sincerely,
Brittany Weber