Rush’s closes its second-oldest Columbia restaurant
Rush’s, Columbia’s own fast-food chain and one of the area’s most well-known brands, has closed one of its local restaurants.
The Rush’s at 2540 Decker Blvd., open since 1980, closed Nov. 2. It was the chain’s second-oldest restaurant.
“It was a 40-year-old building with some maintenance issues,” said Don Alcorn, Rush’s president. “At some point you just have to let it go.”
All the employees from that location have moved to other Rush’s restaurants, Alcorn said.
Rush’s currently has nine locations, all in the Columbia area:
- 2640 Broad River Road, Columbia
- 2332 Sunset Blvd., West Columbia
- 7406 Garners Ferry Road, Columbia
- 201 Columbia Ave., Lexington
- 283 Harbison Blvd., Columbia
- 10016 Two Notch Road, Columbia
- 2207 West Dekalb St., Camden
- 5101 Sunset Blvd., Lexington
- 1796 South Lake Drive, Lexington
The South Lake Drive restaurant in Lexington opened just last year, and the business continues to have an eye toward “growing slowly, as we always have,” Alcorn said. At the moment, Rush’s is considering two potential locations for new restaurants, Alcorn said.
The Rush family started their business in 1940 with a little drive-in ice cream stand in front of what then was the Rush family dairy farm along Broad River Road.
That wooden drive-in burned down, and in 1949, the family built a Dairy Queen restaurant in that same location. In the late 1960s, it was converted into the very first Rush’s restaurant, which is still active today.
