After 11 Years, Gilchrist Closed Its Margate Location — and a Dozen Workers Found Out at the End of Their Shift
Some restaurant closings make the news. This one hurts a little different.
Gilchrist Restaurant closed its Margate location on Tuesday, September 8 — the day after Labor Day weekend. And the dozen or so employees who worked that Tuesday shift didn't know it was their last one until the shift was over. At the end of the day, kitchen workers were handed photocopied notices telling them the restaurant was done, along with instructions on how to collect their final paychecks.
The notice was blunt:
"Today is the last day of service at this location. We are closing this restaurant. The lease on this space is ending. We are choosing not to renew it. The numbers on this location, the building, and the lease are not sustainable. This is about the space and the cost of operating here. It is not about anyone's work."
That's it. No warning, no severance announcement, no mention of whether the displaced workers would be offered spots at the other Gilchrist locations. Eleven years of breakfast shifts, regulars, and blueberry pancakes, ended with a photocopied page.
The Margate location — at 9400 Atlantic Avenue, on the ground floor of the Margate Towers condominiums — had been open since 2014. It was a year-round breakfast and lunch spot at the Shore, which if you know the Jersey Shore restaurant game at all, is the hard version of the job. Summer crowds, quiet winters, and you still have to make the rent in February. Regulars knew it for the Nova Lox Platters and the waffles. The wider Gilchrist menu carries what the company calls its world-famous blueberry pancakes — and they're not wrong to say it.
What makes this one land harder is the history. Gilchrist isn't some chain that opened in 2022 and ran out of money. It's a fourth-generation family business — currently led by Mike Barham and his mother, Denise Stamat — that started in 1946 as a bait-and-tackle shop on Maryland Avenue in Atlantic City. The family started selling sandwiches to local fishermen, and that little operation eventually became the first Gilchrist Restaurant, which later moved to Gardner's Basin in Atlantic City. Eighty years. Four generations. And a lease in Margate ended the Downbeach chapter.
The Margate spot was one of four family-owned restaurants. The other locations — Gardner's Basin in Atlantic City, the White Horse Pike spot in Galloway Township, and the Tropicana in Atlantic City — all remain open. According to reports, Margate appears to be the only one closing. The company was clear that the decision was about the space and the cost of operating there, not the staff.
And look — I get it. Lease math is lease math. The notice said the numbers on the location, the building, and the lease were not sustainable, and I believe them. Margate Towers condo retail space at the Shore is not cheap, and breakfast margins don't stretch to cover bad real estate math forever. The family made a business decision. But the way it landed — a dozen people learning they're out of work from a photocopy at the end of a Tuesday shift, the day after Labor Day — that's the part people will remember longer than the lease terms.
If you're one of the regulars who made the Margate Gilchrist your spot: the other three locations are still open, and those blueberry pancakes aren't going anywhere. Gardner's Basin in AC, Galloway Township, the Tropicana — pull up, show some love. The family built this thing in 1946 selling sandwiches to fishermen, and eighty years later it's still standing. This was a chapter closing, not the book.