At Holiday Snack Bar in Beach Haven, happy days are here again

BEACH HAVEN, N.J. — In the quiet contentment of a basic Holyoke breakfast (two eggs, home fries, toast) enjoyed at the 76-year-old wooden counter of Holiday Snack Bar on Saturday, it was hard to conjure up what all the controversy was about.

“This place is a no-brainer,” said Dominic Corrado, 25, of Cherry Hill, who’d ducked into the Snack Bar with Lauren Garofolo, 26. She went for a slice of the house-baked raspberry crumb cake.

“To me, places like this are the heart and soul of the island,” he said.

At Holiday Snack Bar, happy days are here again.

The Snack Bar is starting the summer of 2024 having resolved a bitter dispute with its neighbors, the Herckners, and the borough of Beach Haven, which on Monday approved a site plan for Holiday Snack Bar calling for 42 outdoor seats and 28 indoor seats around the octagonal-ish counter, slightly fewer on the outside than they had originally asked for.

“Welcome to our happy little place,” owner Eileen Bowker said on Saturday, and couldn’t help but add: “I don’t have any handcuffs on.”

The Bowkers reached an agreement on the number of outdoor seats, and also agreed to build out a 10-foot buffer with their neighbor, with more shrubbery. They have removed or moved a bunch of the shabby chic, beachy relics they favor, such as the whale’s tale remnant of a water slide, the odd door propped up against the fence between them and their neighbors.

Gone is the little red booster rocket ship piece that was salvaged from the ruins of the Jet Star Coaster, destroyed during Hurricane Sandy in Seaside Heights that they were using as a planter out front. Instead, they’ve planted some very genteel geraniums (though the site plan limits how many flower planters can be out front).

The two red cruiser bicycles that have been on the roof of Holiday Snack Bar for decades, left behind one night like a local beach town version of a Santa sleigh and then immortalized, were never challenged.

“I’m very happy,” Bowker said. “We gave up one picnic table.”

So what was behind all the fuss?

And not just a little fuss: more than a year of bitter disputes with the next-door neighbor, the borough revoking their mercantile license and leveling them with fines and violations, the two sides locked in litigation, and hundreds of Holiday Snack Bar lovers showing up to Land Use Board meetings to profess their love for the place.

It pitted lovers of the Snack Bar’s signature Lady Lord Baltimore Cake versus, well, nobody doesn’t love the Lady Lord Baltimore Cake (four layers of devil’s food cake described on the menu as “life changing.”)

Nobody was ever sure exactly why Holiday Snack Bar had become an enemy of borough land use.

Neighbor Carl Herckner said Saturday that he and his wife, Shannan (known for playing Bobbi Mahoney opposite Bill Pullman in Halston on Netflix) never wanted to shut down Holiday Snack Bar, or get rid of all its outdoor seating. Rather, they wanted a return to pre-pandemic numbers of outdoor seats, and for all borough zoning ordinances and laws to be followed.

“Nobody was trying to shut them down,” Herckner said. “I’m fourth generation down there. They’ve been down there less than 20 years but call themselves local.”

Mostly, the fight was about outdoor seating, which was expanded during the pandemic, the total number of allowable seats, and the required 10-foot-wide buffer between the properties.

The mostly aesthetic changes Eileen and Brian Bowker made after purchasing the restaurant in 2021 that gave the place a bit of an island, Deadhead-ish vibe, were placed under a microscope. They battled over whether breakfast could be served. The settlement actually gives them an extra hour to be open, from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m., but no amplified outdoor music.

Around the breakfast counter, Corrado noted that other old retail places on Long Beach Island had closed under pressure of an overheated residential real estate market.

The pressure on the places to sell is intense. The Bowkers, instead, are preserving what for many is a mainstay of their Shore nostalgia. (They are now even discussing franchising.)

“It’s worrying to see institutions disappear, which is what this place is,” Corrado said. If long-loved places such as Woodies in Ship Bottom or Mustache Bill’s in Barnegat Light, both still hanging in there, disappeared, he said, “we’d be devastated.”

Garofolo noted the enduring charm of the open counter, where you face other customers and get the warmth of community, along with a simple meal. “They’re not upselling,” she said. “It’s not $40 plates.”

On Saturday morning, neighbor Frank LaMorte walked by the Snack Bar at the corner of Centre Street and Delaware Avenue and gave Bowker a thumbs-up.

“I’m a half-full guy,” he said. Of the settlement, he said, “I think it’s right what happened.”

Gary and Jan Phillips were finishing up their breakfast: He waxed poetic about his Nutella French toast with fruit; Jan had the Holyoke.

“I’d live here,” Gary said. “What a wonderful place this is.”

Bowker said she was glad for a return to normalcy at a place that feels like the old days. Her employees are not allowed to be on their phones during slow times, she noted, and instead can sometimes be found ... reading books.

“We do the same thing every day, and everyone’s happy about it,” Bowker said.