The Flounder, located at 160 Barbado Lane in Spartanburg, has served seafood and more to the local community since 1969. Photo courtesy of Ken Toney / The Flounder
There is a 100-year-old saying that when choosing a property, especially for business, the top three factors to consider are ‘location, location, location.’
But for Spartanburg resident Ken Toney, he and his family have almost single-handedly proven it wrong time and time again by the example of The Flounder – a landmark restaurant in northwest Spartanburg that turned 57 this April.
“We are the longest-running family-owned seafood restaurant in Spartanburg County,” said Toney, a former owner and now manager who will turn 71 in May. “My mom Joann is 90 and she actually owns the building, and my brother Arty now runs the place. And we are perennially voted by patrons as the area’s best seafood restaurant.”
But you wouldn’t guess it by logic, location, and history.
For example, when Toney’s father Arthur bought the 6-acre site in 1953, it was in the “middle of nowhere,” had no I-26 running next to it, and people had to put in something of an effort just to reach both the property and, eventually, the late 1960s business structure which no one at first could quite figure out.
“My dad built it like a house because he wasn’t sure the business was going to go over,” Toney said. “And if it didn’t, he thought it he could then just make it into a house.”
As for the name, Toney explained that his father couldn’t think of anything until one day when he was eating flounder at a restaurant at Lake Bowen “and came up with the name that way.”
But shortly after opening in April 1969, despite the location, The Flounder had a crowd and “it’s been packed ever since.”
In the next 13 years, the restaurant did so well that the original building underwent two additions that doubled the seating capacity (which is now 270) and enlarged the kitchen to half the size of the entire structure.
Having conquered the location, the next challenge came when a fire in 1981 destroyed everything. Just like that, the business was gone.
But the decision was made almost immediately to rebuild. It took eight months to put it all back together. No one was sure if the attempted resurrection would succeed until the grand re-opening in 1982.
“We had 31 employees when the fire happened – and when we reopened, 30 came back to work for us,” Toney said. “And you couldn’t get near the place, it was so crowded. It was like Saturday every night for about a month.”
As for Toney himself, he was a critical part of the second-run success.
“I was in Clemson pre-medicine in 1973-75, and lost interest because the more I worked the family business, the more interested I became in doing this full time,” he said. “I took over restaurant in 1988, and ran it until 2019, when Arty took over.”
When asked why he thought the restaurant had lasted through the fire and the location, and the first year or so of COVID, Toney put it all down to quality.
“We don’t skimp on anything – we buy the best of every food item, from fish to scallops to oysters, right down to the ketchup. The price may go up, but the quality and the amount of food has stayed the same. And we never get a complaint on the price.”
But sometimes he and Arty get a question about the odd times of operation: Wednesday through Saturday for late afternoon crowds, opening at 3:20 p.m. and closing at 8:20 p.m. – which Toney hinted is something of a long-standing in-joke.
“It’s not called The Flounder for nothing,” he said, resisting a laugh. “And despite our longevity, there are longtime area residents who still don’t know we’re here.”
