The Arby’s Roast Beef restaurant on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood, famous for its enormous, neon-clad hat sign, has shuttered its doors after 55 years. Its last day of operation was Friday. On Monday, at the back of the lot, Gary Husch — general manager of the Arby’s and son-in-law of its original owner — was carting out trash and caught a reporter staring at the bones of the drive-through menu.
“There’s nothing there anymore, huh?” he said. The menu was already a polyptych of long, fluorescent tubes. The Arby’s marquee, sprawled with advertisements for the chain’s affordable, slow-roasted beef sandwiches a few days ago, now reads: “Farewell Hollywood.
TY for 55 great years.” “You know, they’re not making those signs anymore,” Husch said. “It was the 150th Arby’s location ever opened.
” Since its opening in January 1969, the Hollywood Arby’s has had a single owner, Marilyn Leviton, who is 91 years old and Husch’s mother-in-law. Husch said that the Arby’s was simply no longer sustainable. He pointed to a combination of pandemic fallout in a changing neighborhood, rising food costs and the recent law that raised the minimum wage of fast-food workers in California.
“The customer count has gone down over the last few years. A lot of the offices around this area are empty now, and we’re just not getting the same foot traffic we did before,” Husch said. “With inflation, food costs have gone way up and the $20-an-hour minimum wage has b.
