@David · Nov 2, 2026
The Cherney family’s retirement ends a decade of their ownership and roughly two decades of burgers on U.S. 17 Business. The equipment goes to auction four days later, and a key question — what replaces it — remains unanswered.
For a lot of South Strand families, the first meal after unloading the car has been a cheeseburger “all the way” at Hamburger Joe’s Surfside Beach. That ritual has an expiration date now.
Famous Hamburger Joe’s Surfside Beach at 1410 U.S. 17 Business in Surfside Beach will serve its final customers on Nov. 15, according to an announcement the restaurant posted to Facebook on Monday, Nov. 2nd. Owners Tony and Julie Cherney, who have run the place for the past 10 years, are retiring, and they chose to close rather than hand the restaurant to someone else. In their statement, the family thanked Surfside for its loyalty and invited regulars to come in for one more round before the doors shut.
One detail worth flagging for readers making plans: the headline on one outlet’s page listed Nov. 14, but the restaurant’s own post and both news reports’ body text put the last day at Nov. 15 [MyHorryNews, 2026; WMBF News, 2026]. Call ahead at (843) 215-9052 before making a special trip on the final weekend.
The closing is more than a goodbye to a burger stand. It touches three things Horry County locals care about: how homegrown businesses survive their founders, what happens to valuable frontage along the Business 17 corridor, and how much of the Grand Strand’s character lives in places that never had a marketing budget.
To understand what Surfside is losing, start in North Myrtle Beach. The original Hamburger Joe’s opened Oct. 11, 1989, a few weeks after Hurricane Hugo pushed back its planned September debut [WMBF News, 2021]. Founder Joe Brooks had previously run a casual fine-dining spot called Joe’s Bar & Grill, and so many customers assumed it was a burger place that he eventually opened an actual one [WMBF News, 2021]. That location, on 48th Avenue South, has now been operating for 37 years and is not affected by the Surfside closure [MyHorryNews, 2026].
The Surfside restaurant shared the name and the menu but has long been a separately owned operation run by the Cherney family [Country 103.7, 2023]. The difference showed up in small, practical ways. The North Myrtle Beach original famously takes cash only, while the Surfside location accepted credit cards [Country 103.7, 2023]. When Yelp picked the best cheeseburger in each state in 2023, it named the North Myrtle Beach Hamburger Joe’s for South Carolina — recognition that lent some of its shine to the Surfside sibling [Country 103.7, 2023].
The headlines are calling this the end of “a decade of service,” but that framing undersells the location’s history. MyHorryNews reports the restaurant has served Surfside for about 20 years, with the Cherneys owning it for the most recent half of that run. For longtime residents, the building has been a burger joint for a generation of beach weeks, not just ten.
That split identity — a famous name with local owners — is the key to the next part of the story, because it explains why the closure happened the way it did.
Most restaurant closures in this market get blamed on rent, staffing, or a slow off-season. This one, by every public account, is about two owners deciding they are done working. The family’s announcement framed the decision as a reluctant retirement, not a business collapse.
That matters, because it shows a weakness in the Grand Strand’s small-business economy that rarely gets discussed: succession. A franchise has a corporate parent to find a new operator. A family business has the family. When the owners step away and no one is lined up to take over, a profitable, beloved restaurant can disappear just as completely as a failing one.
The area has seen this pattern before. Anthony’s Pizza & Pan Pasta in Surfside Beach closed after more than two decades when its longtime owner retired [The Sun News via AOL]. By contrast, when Dagwood’s Deli shut its downtown Myrtle Beach location in 2025, the owners kept the Surfside Beach and North Myrtle Beach delis open and said they wanted to focus on those [WFXB, 2025]. The lesson from both: whether a local institution survives often depends less on the books than on whether someone has a plan to carry it forward.
The Cherneys also ran a sizable operation. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Tony Cherney told WBTW he had more than 40 employees — he spoke up then after a mask dispute at the restaurant drew Facebook backlash, saying he wanted to protect his staff from fallout [WBTW, 2020]. The current headcount hasn’t been reported, but even a fraction of that number is a real hit to South Strand service jobs heading into the slow season.
One of those employees put a human face on the news. Shift manager Michael Sheppard, who has worked at the Surfside location for 10 years — essentially the entire Cherney era — told MyHorryNews he was still processing the announcement and described having mixed feelings about it [MyHorryNews, 2026]. He said customers have reacted with similar surprise and sadness, and that he has not yet decided on his next move.
If retirement explains why the restaurant is closing, the property explains why it probably won’t come back in the same form.
According to Sheppard, his understanding is that the property itself has been sold. Neither the buyer nor any plans for the site have been made public, and the owners’ announcement did not address the real estate.
That silence leaves the most important civic question open. A sale, rather than a lease handoff, suggests the next chapter for 1410 U.S. 17 Business may look different from a burger joint. Along this corridor, the pressure on older, single-story restaurant buildings is constant, and residents have watched beloved spots get replaced with very different uses.
Not every transition goes badly. When Borgata of Surfside closed on Dec. 31, 2024 after more than seven years, citing unexpected challenges [The Sun News via Yahoo, 2025], a new bar and restaurant, Griffin’s P.H., moved into the space and even kept the old building’s familiar beach mural [The Sun News via AOL, 2025]. But that was a tenant swap. A completed land sale gives the new owner far more room to reshape the site.
For Surfside Beach, which has spent much of the past two years trying to get a single restaurant open on its rebuilt pier [WMBF News, 2026], losing an established, high-volume eatery on its main commercial road is not a small thing. Town planning and zoning records will show what the buyer intends once a permit or rezoning request is filed. Until then, any talk of what’s coming is speculation.
Whatever goes up on the lot, the restaurant’s contents will be gone even sooner.
Myrtle Beach Auction Company announced Monday that it will hold a liquidation sale of the restaurant’s contents at 1 p.m. on Thursday, Nov. 19 — four days after the final burger. Pre-bidding opens Nov. 3 at MyrtleBeachAuction.com.
The listing covers the full kitchen and dining room: tables and chairs, commercial coolers and refrigeration, a refrigerated beer tap system, bar equipment, TVs, wall décor, and restaurant memorabilia [MyHorryNews, 2026]. That last category is likely to draw the most local interest. Reviewers have long noted the walls lined with dollar bills and automobile license tags [Wanderlog], the kind of accumulated clutter that turns a restaurant into a scrapbook.
The speed of the sale reinforces the bigger point: this is a full wind-down, not a pause. When the equipment is sold off within a week of closing, a quiet reopening under new management becomes very unlikely.
For regulars, the auction may be the last chance to take home a piece of the place. For the community, it marks the moment a business becomes a memory.
It is easy to romanticize a closing restaurant, and Hamburger Joe’s of Surfside had critics. Online reviews have been mixed, with some diners praising the smash-style burgers and wings and others calling the food ordinary [Tripadvisor; Wanderlog]. But its role was never about fine dining. The town’s own tourism site describes it as a no-frills burger stop that many returning visitors treat as a vacation tradition [Visit Surfside Beach]. Reviewers repeatedly mention cheap draft beer after a day at the beach and long summer waits on the benches out front [Tripadvisor].
That combination — affordable, unpretentious, and dependable — is getting harder to find on the Grand Strand as land values climb and newer restaurants chase higher price points. Losing it is a small but real change to the texture of Surfside Beach, especially for year-round residents who relied on it in the off-season too.
If you worked at Hamburger Joe’s or have a story from its two decades on Business 17, we want to hear it. Send tips and memories to david@myrtlebeachsc.com.
Hamburger Joe’s Surfside Beach – Surfside Beach’s Hamburger Joe’s to close, contents headed to auction — MyHorryNews (2026)
Hamburger Joe’s Surfside Beach – Hamburger Joe’s closing after a decade of service in Surfside — WMBF News (2026)
Hamburger Joe’s Surfside Beach – Dining With Dockery: Hamburger Joe’s — WMBF News (2021)
Hamburger Joe’s Surfside Beach – South Carolina’s Best Cheeseburger Is This One Where Customers Need To Bring Cash — Country 103.7 (2023)
Hamburger Joe’s Surfside Beach – Surfside Beach restaurant owner says couple cited for not wearing masks were ‘abrasive’ — WBTW
Hamburger Joe’s Surfside Beach – A longtime Surfside Beach SC restaurant has decided to close its doors permanently — The Sun News via AOL
Hamburger Joe’s Surfside Beach – Dagwood’s Deli & Bumstead’s Pub in Myrtle Beach to close — WFXB (2025)
Hamburger Joe’s Surfside Beach – Surfside Beach bar and restaurant closes in the new year — The Sun News via Yahoo (2025)
Hamburger Joe’s Surfside Beach – New restaurant opens in Surfside Beach, keeping the iconic mural — The Sun News via AOL
Hamburger Joe’s Surfside Beach – Surfside Beach leaders anticipate Surf Diner will open in a matter of weeks — WMBF News (2026)
