The vacant Applebee’s Restaurant along Boundary Street in Beaufort will soon have a new tenant. Culver’s Restaurant will be going into the spot sometime in 2024.
A call to Culver’s corporate offices on Tuesday verified that a franchise agreement has been signed for the location at 2338 Boundary Street.
Culver’s has been around since its inception in 1984. The first location opened in Sauk City, Wisconsin, under the name “Culver’s Frozen Custard and ButterBurgers.”
Fast forward to today, and it operates primarily in the Midwestern United States, and has a total of 930 restaurants in 26 states as of October 2023, including 9 locations currently in South Carolina. Among these are Summerville, North Charleston and Ladson. Also, close to Beaufort, there are Culver’s Restaurant locations in Pooler and Savannah, Georgia.
Referring to itself as a “fast-casual restaurant”, Culver’s menu offers a variety of lunch and dinner items including its signature ButterBurgers, chicken sandwiches, seafood, salads and more.
It also offers sides incuding fries, onion rings, chili and its popular Wisconsin cheese curds that are provided exclusively to Culver’s by a dairy in Stanley, Wisconsin.
Its dessert menu is where it’s at, with shakes, sundaes, floats and malts offered using its own line of frozen custard.
According to a Culver’s corporate representative, there is no timeline for the location opening. The existing building must first be converted to corporate specs and we were told that “it could take some time for that,” but we can expect it to be completed and opened sometime in 2024.
After opening in 1994, the Beaufort Applebee’s location closed in 2017 during the Boundary Street construction project, with its owner citing a loss of revenue due to the project.
Since then, it was the very short-lived home of Los Gallos Mexican Restaurant, and still bears the Los Gallos signage today.
The news of Culver’s Restaurant in Beaufort comes on the heels of a new Cook Out restaurant also opening on Boundary Street, and also a new Asian Chicken & Boba spot going into Beaufort Town Center, which are both slated for early 2024 openings, as well as the enormous Beaufort Station shopping center project that is also expected to open in late 2024.
